


Rare in this Society

by circ_bamboo



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Everyone is Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Romance Novel, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Blue Hawke, F/M, Fenris's Shitty Canon Backstory, Harlequin challenge, Hawke Has A Twin, M/M, Multi, Purple Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 13:01:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 69,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: Garrett's twin sister, Marian, has asked him for a rather large favor: to marry her friend, Anders, so he can avoid an immigration tangle. Meanwhile, Marian's got her own entanglement with Fenris, Garrett's best friend. Throw in the usual cast of merry assholes who need Hawke's help (either Hawke), a meddling father, and a hundred-and-fifty-pound mutt named Barkspawn, and we'll see who ends up with a happy ending!(Everyone. It's everyone. Except Meredith.)





	1. ~in which an engagement is made~

**Author's Note:**

> So, a few years ago I wrote [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002136) for an MCU exchange, creating a smallish [Masquerade](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Masquerade) world where there were alchemists and mages and superheroes all at once. Then someone issued a Harlequin Challenge, and what with and some twisted thinking later, I decided I needed to move the DA2 characters into a modern AU, but obviously one with magic, so I borrowed that universe.
> 
> A few notes: [Here](https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781460394380_soft-target.html) and [here](https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781488092190_craving-his-best-friends-ex.html) are the books I remixed, sort of, for the challenge. It's basically a slowburn marriage of convenience plot with a "oh no my brother's best friend" plot wrapped up in it, with some elements of billionaire romance. I played exactly 0 of these tropes straight. Garrett and Marian are twins and they both exist. No one's dead, including Malcolm. Also, to make the timelines work, I had to shove all of Anders's and Fenris's backstories back somewhat. If you need more details on that, see [here](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/179626388928/fic-rare-in-this-society-da2). Also, I'm an attorney. I know the immigration stuff is at least 50% bullshit, but ~waves hands~ artistic license.

"Well," Garrett said, sliding into a stool at the bar. "I'm here. What did you want to talk to me about?"

"Garrett," Marian said. She came over with a pint of what was his favorite beer at the moment. "My favorite brother." Her smile was a little too sweet, and the low light of the bar, combined with her dark hair and pale skin, made her look a little unearthly.

"You're only saying that because you want something from me." She’d told him as much in her text, but still. He picked up the pint glass and savored the chill between his hands.

"You know I want something from you," Marian said. "Also, in all fairness, I do like you better than Carver."

"I'm your twin. I should hope you do." Garrett slurped down about a third of the beer in one long gulp--hey, he was a big guy; it took a lot to get him drunk--and wiped the foam off his face with the back of one hand. For just a moment he froze, wondering if he’d managed to get all of the pyrovine off his hands after work. Then his brain kicked in and he recognized the fake-apple smell of the industrial soap. He had remembered to wash his hands, and he wasn't going to burn his beard off with the volatile alchemical element he’d been working with. Probably.

"That, and Carver's a shit," Marian said cheerfully.

"He's been better since he graduated from the police academy," Garrett said, but it was true: Carver was a shit and always had been. Thank the Maker Carver's twin Bethany was all sweetness and sunshine. "Again, what did you want to talk to me about?"

"So, you know Anders." She started slicing a lemon into wedges, chucking one into Garrett’s glass.

Did he? He picked out the lemon wedge and squeezed it. "Who?"

Marian pointed to a shadowy corner of the bar with the knife. "Him."

"I don't see anyone," Garrett said.

Marian rolled her eyes. "Look again."

The particular emphasis that she put on "look" clued him in to what he should be doing; when he took a second glance, using alchemical vision (Seeing, it was technically called), he saw a pile of fabric and reddish-blond hair on top. "Is he dead?"

Marian didn't dignify that with a response. Anders clearly wasn't dead, but Garrett was pretty sure he was asleep. And now that he could see--See--that Anders had the tell-tale green streaks of a Healer running all over his body, Garrett knew who he was, at least from Marian's stories. "The, ah, doctor," he said.

"He is a doctor," Marian said. "No 'ah' necessary. But you remember what I told you?"

That he wasn’t registered with the Healer's Guild because of some reason that Garrett couldn't remember, yeah. "Some of it."

"Well, I'll remind you later." Marian pointed at Anders again, the blade of her knife flashing in the overhead lights. "They're trying to yank his visa."

"Why are they trying to yank his visa?"

She gave him a look. "Aunt Meredith," she said.

Aunt Meredith wasn't any relation of theirs, and it wasn't even a courtesy title. Their parents, Malcolm and Leandra Hawke, were relatively highly ranked within the Alchemists' Guild, and Meredith was the head of the Watchmen's Guild, effectively the magical law enforcement.

Garrett, like his siblings, lived most of his life in the mundane world. Even though he could have hidden himself away in one of the magical universities and done research all day, he had a normal degree or three in chemical engineering and a job at a mundane company. If he used his alchemical skills to make sure that he could work with pyrovine without harming himself, well, most people he worked with didn't know and neither he nor his boss was going to tell them. His parents weren’t technically alchemists for their day jobs, either. Malcolm was a lawyer, saving his work with adamantium for a hobby, and his mother was a very behind-the-scenes lobbyist for the Guilds, masquerading as a society wife.

Marian, despite being at least as talented as Garrett himself, was a bartender, and she loved her job. Garrett supposed that someone had to be the black sheep of the family.

Anyway, so "Aunt" Meredith was trying to revoke Anders's visa. "Wait, where's he from?"

"With a name like Anders, where do you think he's from?" Marian said, snorting.

"Minnesota?"

Marian rolled her eyes again.

"Why on earth would he come to the US if he's a Swedish citizen?"

"Norwegian, and Aunt Meredith reasons."

"So what do you need me for? Aunt Meredith hates me at least as much as she hates you."

Marian's posture changed a little and she got all cloyingly sweet. "Garrett, you always liked helping people in need, right?"

He wasn't going to like what she was asking. "Does he need money?" He had a lot of money; his job paid really well and he didn't spend it on much except dog food. (Lots of dog food. Barkspawn ate a lot and turned it all into epic piles of poop.) Plus, like Marian, he'd gotten a trust from his grandparents when he'd turned twenty-one, and he hadn't spent it all on school.

"No, although the fact that you come with cash is helpful. He needs to be a US citizen, Garrett."

"Dad's the lawyer," he said cautiously. He knew where she was going; he only played the oaf on television.

"There's more than one way to get approved for a green card," she said, "and Dad has agreed to help with the paperwork part."

"Dad approves of me green-card-marrying a dude so he can--" It occurred to him that he probably shouldn't say the rest out loud, so he just made an indeterminate gesture in the air.

"Well, duh," Marian said. "It's Dad."

Fair enough. Mother would be pissed as hell, but Dad would probably pay for the entire wedding and the thousands of dollars that it would cost to get the rest of the green card stuff pushed through in less than a decade.

He didn't need Marian to spell out all the other reasons that she was asking him to do this. He was notoriously, epic-ly single, and equally notoriously, epic-ly bisexual. While he’d expected he’d get married someday for love, he wasn’t particularly against marrying someone for reasons that had nothing to do with Twoo Wuv if they needed help. He also knew why she was asking him to do it rather than just marrying Anders herself. Although she was also epic-ly single and bisexual, she had a . . . reputation. Not a bad one, necessarily, but one for being the kind of person you went to if you were, say, in danger of being deported because the head of the Magic Police didn't like you. It meant that she'd come in for a lot of scrutiny that he, upstanding citizen that he pretended to be, wouldn't, even though he was her twin brother.

"Does he like dogs?"

"Cats, I think," Marian said, with that smug fucking grin that he knew all too well. "But you can talk to him about it."

Garrett groaned.

***

Anders had no fucking clue why he'd agreed to meet Marian's brother at all, but especially not after his third twelve-hour shift in three days in the ER. When he'd gotten to The Hanged Man at seven-thirty, just after his shift had ended, plus the time for a shower, he'd been so exhausted that he'd told Marian to wake him up when Garrett got there.

"He should be here soon," she'd said. "He just has to let his dog out."

Of course he had a dog. "Well, then, I'll get a ten-minute catnap," he said, and waved his hand in the air, making it look like he was just gesturing as he cast a subtle ignore-me veil over himself. He knew Marian could see through it--Healing magic didn’t do Mage stuff quite as well as a pure Mage talent would--just as she knew he was going to cast one. He and Marian had an arrangement, though, where he could do some things that she’d never allow anyone else to do on her turf, like cast spells. The arrangement also included the fact that he was allowed to sleep on her bar despite it probably being against a dozen health code regulations. Pillowing his head on his arms, he fell asleep almost immediately.

He woke up what felt like zero minutes later when someone--Marian, by the feel of it--touched him on the shoulder. That it was her was pretty much the only reason that he didn't jump out of his skin and zap someone, but he still started. "Hrmgh?"

"Anders," Marian said quietly, "meet my brother Garrett."

Anders was entirely certain that he'd met Garrett before, or at least seen him, because he was a regular at Marian's bar and so was Garrett, but . . . he really hadn't _seen_ him, had he? He suppressed a groan. Marian was gorgeous, short hair artfully tousled and red lipstick always perfect. She was tall, at least his height, and built like a brick shithouse and sure, he'd entertained more than one fantasy about asking her out, but you didn't do that to a bartender if you had any sense. He probably should have expected that her twin brother would also be gorgeous. 

But Garrett was like someone had cracked open Anders's brain and asked, _Hey, what do you want a hot guy to look like?_ He had a terrible weakness for big, broad-shouldered men with neatly trimmed beards, and the light brown eyes, unexpected, given that Marian's were a nearly aquamarine blue, were the cherry on top of a six-foot-five pie.

Or some other mixed metaphor. He wasn't quite awake. "Hi," he said belatedly, sticking his hand out. "I'm Anders." He had a last name, didn't he? "Nordbotten. Anders Nordbotten."

"Garrett Hawke," Garrett said, smiling, and oh no, he had crinkles near his eyes even though he was in his late twenties like Marian, right? They were twins, so that meant they were the same age, yes, obviously, had he even gone to med school? "Nice to meet you, Anders. I understand you need some help?"

"Help, yes," Anders said. Where were his words, or for that matter, his manners? "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. Marian speaks highly of you."

"It's at least fifty percent lies," Garrett said, clearly joking, and Anders couldn't help but smile back. 

Maker, but the man was attractive. Anders had a brief moment of self-consciousness; had he even shaved that morning? Probably not, but maybe it looked like he wasn't shaving on purpose.

Well, neither of them was there because of attraction. "I hope the good parts aren't lies. I expect she's told you the essentials of my situation?"

"Yes," Garrett said and looked around. "Perhaps we should go somewhere a little more private?"

"No one's listening," Marian said.

Garrett tilted his head in his sister's direction, and she rolled her eyes. "All right," he said, half to Marian and half to himself, if Anders was any judge, and he settled onto the bar stool he'd been sitting next to.

"Does she mean she--" Anders waved a hand in the air. He knew Marian was capable of small amounts of magic; that was how they had gotten to be acquaintances, or more than "that guy who shows up at the bar too often, really, and the bartender who sells him cheap-ass beer."

"Yes," Garrett said. "I thought maybe you'd done it."

"I could," Anders said, "but I didn't. Could you?"

"No," Garrett said, holding his hands up. "Alchemist."

"I'll take your word for it," Anders said. "I can't See. Not like that, anyhow."

"You can't?"

"No," he said, "but I can tell that you've broken your nose twice and your right arm once." He reached out to touch Garrett's arm partway up, where the healed break showed, but he stopped before he actually made contact. Touching was also not why they were here. "I mean."

"Cool party trick," Garrett said, smiling again. "So anyway, Aunt Meredith hates you, is trying to yank your visa, you can’t go to your Guild for help because you’re not a member, and my sister and my father have decided that the best way to keep you here is for you to marry me."

"Uh." Anders was temporarily flummoxed, which was turning out to be his basic state around Garrett Hawke. He didn't know if this boded well or poorly for their marriage, if it actually happened. "Yes, I suppose that's it in a nutshell. Is she actually your aunt?"

"No," Garrett said. "Thank goodness. No relation at all. Do you like dogs?"

Again, Anders didn't know how to respond. "They're . . . fine? I used to have a cat, back in med school."

"I have a dog," Garrett said. "Big mastiff mix." He held up a hand closer to his chest than his waist, which was really a terrifying size for a dog. "Really smart, really loyal. I couldn't imagine marrying someone that Barkspawn didn't like."

"Barkspawn?"

Garrett shrugged. "It's a name."

"It's from a video game."

"Yeah," Garrett said, grinning. He smiled a lot, Anders thought. It was nice. "So when do you want to meet him?"

"I suppose tonight's as good as any time?" What was he thinking?

"Sure," Garrett said. "Let's go. I'm about two subway stops from here, or a twenty-minute walk."

"I'd prefer to walk." Anders thought it would be easier to stay awake that way.

"Sure." He gestured at Marian, who made a rude gesture at him, and then slid off the bar stool. "Let's go."

They left--Garrett conspicuously not paying his tab--and walked side by side through the deepening twilight. It was maybe a little after eight, not that late, although Anders was pretty certain he could fall asleep at any moment.

"You don't have an accent," Garrett said, out of nowhere.

"I do have an accent," Anders said. "It's just very similar to yours."

"That's not--Aren't you from Sweden?"

"Norway, by way of Oxford."

"Oh."

"But I expect I sound vaguely English for the same reason you do."

Garrett nodded. "Because the people who taught you how to speak English spoke RP?"

"Precisely." Marian had mentioned that her parents were from London originally, and clearly they were upper-class enough to speak like BBC presenters. Marian occasionally mimicked her mother’s accent when telling a story, and it was similar to the Oxford dons that he’d modeled his own pronunciation after. Fortunately, all four Hawke children had been born in the US, or marrying Garrett wouldn't help him at all. Anders fell silent for a moment. "Marian said you're a chemical engineer?"

"Yeah, for Kirkwall Corp," he said. "It's a job."

"Do you, uh--"

Fortunately Garrett knew what he was asking, without having to finish the sentence. He'd never gotten good at talking about magic and the Guilds and whatnot in public; he'd just avoided the topic altogether for years, until he'd somehow started talking with Marian about it.

"Yes," Garrett said. "I work with pyrovine." The alchemical element associated with fire, it had just come into use among non-magical folks in the last decade or two. “I’m good at what I do even without the alchemy.” He said the words with no real shading other than basic statement of fact. "But it’s easier not to harm myself or anyone else if I use a little power. Do you?"

Anders shrugged. "When it can't be helped."

"What kind of visa are you here under?"

"An H-1B."

Garrett actually stopped at that one. "Really?" H-1B visas were for specialty workers. American immigration was notoriously awful.

Anders smiled. "I'm good at what I do."

"Which is?"

"Infectious diseases. That, and I suspect that the Healer's Guild in England bribed someone here into getting me out of their country.”

"I was going to say, I thought it was mostly universities that sponsored doctors.”

“Usually, yes.”

“So you were sponsored by your hospital, and somehow Aunty Em is able to convince them to withdraw their support?"

"Not quite," Anders said. "The hospital is willing to keep supporting me, but the government is investigating the hospital for how many visas they have sponsored, and everyone is getting scared." He really should tell Garrett the rest of the truth, but . . . maybe not yet. "They haven't quite announced that they're going to deport me, but I think we all expect it'll happen."

"Back to Norway?"

"Well, that's what my passport says."

"Sorry," Garrett said. "Turn right here. I'll try to stop being an ass."

Anders sighed. "No, I shouldn't be snappish," he said. "I've worked three twelve-hour shifts in as many days, and I could use a day off."

"Do you want to try this again some other day?" Garrett asked, and oh, that was nice of him, but they'd come this far.

"No," Anders said on another sigh. "Let's meet your dog."

Barkspawn was exactly as large as advertised. He put his paws on Anders's shoulders, sniffed him a few times, and then licked his face. Anders stood incredibly still during the entire procedure, until Garrett managed to wrestle his monster dog to the ground. "Well, I think he likes you," Garrett said, offering Anders a kitchen towel to wipe off his face.

"I wonder what he does to people he doesn't like," Anders said, but he knew enough about dogs to know that Barkspawn did, in fact, like him.

"Stands on them until I tell him to let them go," Garrett admitted. "Would you like something to drink? Let me take your coat."

Anders allowed Garrett to take his coat, although it revealed the scrubs he was wearing underneath, which weren't the cleanest. "Nothing to drink, thanks." Only then did he actually look around Garrett's apartment--which was _huge_.

It would have been large by the standards of the smallish town he'd grown up in, and by New York standards, it was palatial. Anders had been vaguely aware that they were in a good neighborhood, but Garrett had what he thought was called a garden apartment in a very nice building, connecting to a small fenced-in yard, which explained why he had such a big dog in an apartment.

But there was an actual hallway and a separate living room from dining room, and Anders thought he spotted more than one door in the back, indicating multiple bedrooms. "You live here by yourself?"

"Ah, yeah," Garrett said, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. "Just me and Barkspawn. I don't mean to be an asshole, but I'm guessing this is bigger than your place?"

"I might be able to fit my entire place in your kitchen, and I've got three roommates," Anders said. It was an exaggeration, but not much of one. "Chemical engineering must pay exceptionally well."

"Well," Garrett said. "Marian didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"You know who our parents are?"

"Malcolm Hawke. I didn't catch your mother's name." Malcolm Hawke was about the third-highest ranked political member of the Alchemists’ Guild, after Debra Fluharty and Revka . . . what was her name again?

"Leandra, but her family is the Amells."

Anders grabbed behind him for a wall. "You're--you're an Amell?" That was it. Revka’s last name was Amell, and apparently she was Garrett’s aunt. The Amells were one of the most powerful family in the Alchemists' Guild and had been for something ridiculous like a _millennium._

"No," Garrett said, "I'm a Hawke. But I got a shitload of money from my Amell grandparents, and I didn't need all of it for college, so I bought a condo. Here, let's sit."

"I went to school with one of your cousins," Anders said faintly as Garrett steered him in the general direction of a couch. A couch, because there were two; Garrett took the other and Barkspawn jumped up to fill the rest of the space. "She was--she was basically a princess."

"Oh, Solona," Garrett said. "First cousin, but we don’t see my mom’s side of the family often. I think I met her once. So you were at Oxford for med school?"

"Yes," Anders said.

"So you didn't know that by marrying me, you're getting my dad's help but also the power of the entire existing Amell family."

"I had no idea," he said. He hoped the truth of the matter was evident to Garrett. "Honestly. Marian never mentioned that part. She did say that you were good-looking and nice, and that was about it."

Garrett nodded. "I believe you." He flashed Anders a grin. "Good-looking, you say? She said that?"

"She did."

"And you agree?"

"Are you fishing for compliments?"

"Maybe a little," Garrett said. "You're not so bad yourself. Probably handsome, if you'd gotten any sleep in the last week."

Anders shrugged, feeling his face turn bright red in that way that only strawberry-blond Scandinavians could. "I do all right."

Fortunately Garrett didn't comment, although the look on his face said that he definitely noticed the blush. (How could he not, Anders supposed. He undoubtedly looked like a forest fire at sunset.) "I think this could work."

"What? I mean, thank you," he added hastily. "It's . . . quite a commitment, and I--to be honest, I think it's too much to put on you. I should--there has to be another way."

"Why?" Garrett shrugged. "You're here, I'm here, we're both single, I don't have any long-term plans that would be messed up by getting married to you. Did you?"

Anders shook his head. "Not in particular."

"You presumably don't give a shit that I'm bisexual, or we wouldn't have gotten this far."

"It would be a little hypocritical to give a shit about that," Anders said drily.

"That makes things easier," Garrett said. "So how is this going to work? Are we going to keep the green card stuff between you and me and Marian and my dad? I'd think that would be best."

"Agreed."

"So we need to pretend we fell in love for everyone else. Hard and fast enough that we're getting married in a short period of time." Garrett chuckled. "Not that that's entirely out of character for me."

"You've been married before?"

"No," Garrett said. "I just--" He made the whistling and explosion noise of a fall off a cliff. "Not uncommon for me. Which is probably why Marian suggested me."

Anders didn't pretend to misunderstand that Garrett would fall hard and fast for him. He knew what he was getting into, he really did. But his stomach, which was hurtling off of the cliff that Garrett had so audibly described, didn't seem to be listening to him.

***

Marian watched her brother leave the bar with Anders with more than a little satisfaction. She knew Garrett would be the right guy for Anders, in more than one way. In all honesty, she really liked the guy, even though he was a disaster-du-jour type. Garrett liked being someone's rock; even though he pretended he wasn't, he was the adultiest adult of the four of them. It would work out.

Probably.

If that demon dog of her brothers liked Anders, which wasn't a given.

Oh well. She couldn't worry about that now.

She hummed to herself as she stacked pint glasses in a tub and sent them back to be washed. Isabela, one of the part-time servers, came for the tub and rested it on her hip as she gave Marian a look. "What's got you so pleased?"

"Evil machinations," Marian said.

Bela grinned. "I don't doubt it, beautiful. Did I see your brother leave this place with Doctor Rags-and-Bones?"

"Yes, but not like that."

Isabela fortunately let it drop; Garrett was a touchy subject between them, as somehow both Marian and her brother had slept with Bela without realizing the other had. The incidents had been a year apart, but still. "Are you working tomorrow night?" Bela asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"I'm accompanying a bridal party and we might stop in." Bela's other job was exotic dancer, and she did freelance gigs like, well, being the exotic dancer accompanying a wedding party on a bar crawl quite frequently. It had somehow gotten to be a thing.

"Thanks for the warning," Marian said. "Now go on, get those back to the kitchen to be washed." She snapped a bar towel in Bela's general direction, and Bela laughed as she went.

"Where is your brother?"

That voice was impossible to mistake, as well as the disdain that dripped from nearly every syllable. Marian turned around slowly to face the speaker, her best and sharpest smile on her face. "Fenris. How lovely to see you. Nice weather we're having, aren't we? Do please take a seat. What are you drinking tonight?"

Fenris was her brother's best friend and her worst enemy simultaneously. Well, not her worst enemy, probably; she hated Aunty Meredith much more than she hated Fenris. She didn't even _hate_ Fenris, although he probably hated her. Somehow Fenris found it easy to forget that Garrett was as much an Amell as she was, probably because he simply didn't use any of his alchemical powers around Fenris. Marian didn't have that luxury; she used hers to manage the bar and make it one of the safest places in New York nearly every single minute of every shift. The silver lines around the sign advertising it as such if you were able to see? Hers. The small spells that meant that no one could listen in on a conversation that they shouldn't hear? Hers. The protection veils on anyone who left the bar with good intentions? Hers. Hell, even the spells to make sure that the beer taps stayed clean and unclogged? All her.

And Fenris could See that, and he hated it. Marian knew enough of his life before college, when he'd met Garrett, to understand why he hated it, but she wouldn't, _couldn't_ change her life to make him more comfortable. Not for someone as tenuously related to her as her brother's best friend.

The worst of it was, he was _incredibly_ attractive, with a high-cheekboned, sharp-chinned face, dark green eyes, and a wiry frame topped by a shock of bleached-white hair. She didn't even _care_ that he bleached his hair white, because he pulled it off so well and had been doing so for most of the decade that she'd known him.

And his voice . . . she liked gravelly baritones, so what? If the reaction of roughly half the people in the bar every time he spoke was anything to go by, she wasn't alone.

Now he was glaring at her, those green eyes narrowed under stark black brows. (Which was how she knew he bleached his hair.) "Garrett," he ground out.

"Not here," Marian said, pouring him a glass of red wine. Of course she knew what his favorite was, which was why she gave him the next bottle over. He'd drink it anyway. "You can text him."

"I have," Fenris said. "He isn't answering."

"Do I look like his social secretary?"

"Is he all right?"

"What, you want me to activate my Wonder Twins power and find out?" She and Garrett did, in fact, have a bit of a connection because of the twin thing--so did Bethany and Carver--but not over this distance. Fenris had to know that, being that he'd literally lived with Garrett for a number of years.

"He might answer if you text him."

"I doubt it," she said, which was the wrong thing to say.

He pounced on it. "So you do know where he is."

Marian heaved a deep sigh. "Did you make an arrangement to meet Garrett here tonight?"

"I did not."

"Then why does it matter if you know where he is?"

A muscle in Fenris's jaw jumped. "Forgive me for being worried when a friend of mine is not where he usually is," he said, low and dangerous, and turned on his heel and left.

Marian took a breath and then gave in, looking at Fenris as he stalked out with her magical vision.

He was _breathtaking_ , chased silver lines over the few inches of bared skin that she could see. She'd seen him in a towel once, when she'd gone to visit Garrett and gotten there right when he was getting out of the shower, and the silver lines, she could See, covered every inch of him.

(Well. She didn't know about a particular set of inches, and she probably never would.)

From what she knew, a previous foster parent had been an alchemist, but not one associated with the Guild and therefore not bound to their rules. He'd tried to make Fenris an alchemist, and it had sort of succeeded--Fenris could See, and the silver lines all over him were usually the sign of an alchemist, but he couldn't actually use the power. Even if he could, Marian knew he wouldn't, but the power just sat on his skin in a strange way. The marks of power floated over everyone else’s skin, but on Fenris they looked more like silver scars, raised on his skin. Even though she knew the pain involved, the effect was amazing.

He had every reason to hate alchemists and magic in general, but he didn't have to be such an ass about it.

But _fuck_ , he was pretty.

"Does Garrett care that his best friend and his sister spend all their time picking fights with each other?"

Marian spun around to see one of her other regulars--and friends--had come in when she'd been paying more attention to Fenris's hands and the back of his neck than her customers. "Hi, Varric. What can I get you?"

"The usual, Champ," he said, waving his hand. "Well?"

"Why do you care?"

"So I can get it right in the book I'm writing about you."

Varric wasn't entirely joking, and she knew it; he was a writer, and he was the author of a long-running urban fantasy series--twelve volumes and counting--that had some basis in the magical world that supposedly no one who wasn't magical knew about. But Varric, who was about as magical as a brick, had some connections somewhere, and so he knew more than he really should.

It didn't matter to Marian. She liked him, and she didn't care about the rules that said she wasn't supposed to tell other people about alchemists and the Guilds and whatnot. She didn't usually tell anyone, mostly because people would think she was weird. When Varric came in to the bar the first time and started chatting her ear off about what colors of magic meant what particular skill sets, though, she just answered him as she would anyone in the know.

But anyway, Varric kept his books just on the right side of accurate (which was to say, not very), Marian told him stories, and he tipped her well.

Plus, he was kind of weirdly attractive, if you liked Brooklyn accents, nicknames, and barrel-chested dudes whose shirts never seemed to have any top buttons.

(Marian kind of did. But he never hit on her, which was just fine with her.)

He called her Champ and her brother Shiny, which didn't quite make sense to her. Maybe it was because Garrett was such a Boy Scout that he gave Captain America a run for his money. Although, if the internet reports were correct, Garrett was a couple inches taller than the actual Captain America, and wasn’t that a kicker. Fenris was Broody, after some complicated chicken joke. Bethany was Sunshine and Carver was Junior, short for Garrett Junior rather than Malcolm Junior. Carver hated the nickname, but given that he did sort of look like a shrunken version of Garrett, well, it wasn't incorrect. 

"I don't know how he feels about it," she said finally, when she came back with Varric's beer. "I mean, it's something we avoid talking about."

"Is there a reason you didn't tell Broody that Shiny went home with Blondie?"

Anders's hair was more of a strawberry blond, but that didn't seem to matter to Varric, whose hair was actually red.

"If Garrett wants Fenris to know what's going on there, he should probably tell him directly," Marian said.

"Mmm. True."

"I was still kind of a shit to him," she admitted. She knew he worried about Garrett more than was probably necessary, and she probably should have just told him where Garrett was.

"Mmm, yeah," Varric said. He scribbled something down in a notebook he pulled out of a random pocket. "Lots of feelings there."

Marian shrugged. "Eh."

"You definitely watched him leave."

Marian shrugged again. "He's got a great ass."

Varric chuckled. "That he does."

***

Infuriating woman. Why had he even asked her about Garrett in the first place?

Fenris jammed his hands in his pockets as he left The Hanged Man. He wished it were raining, as that would suit his mood better, but no, it was a perfectly nice spring evening, cool enough that he was comfortable in long sleeves. The air was as clear as it ever got. The sidewalk from there to his bus stop appeared relatively free of humans and noxious garbage. Everything was wonderful, except for the fact that he simply couldn't get a hold of his best friend.

Not that he needed anything from Garrett in particular. He just knew Garrett's schedule backwards and forwards and Garrett should have been at his sister's bar at that particular moment, and he was not. Nor was he answering his phone, and those two facts put together were worrying, given that Garrett was nothing if not a creature of habit.

He supposed something may have come up at work. Perhaps Barkspawn wasn't feeling well. Maybe the plumbing needed to be fixed. (Garrett would probably try to do it himself.) There were a hundred and fifty reasons why he couldn't get a hold of Garrett at that moment, and a hundred and forty of them were innocuous.

Well. Other than Marian's irksome stonewalling. It seemed very likely to him that Garrett had been at her bar and then had left, but she wouldn't tell him why. He could imagine no reason for her refusal, other than sheer contrariness.

Had he not asked the correct question? He reviewed the conversation in his mind, but no, he'd asked the important question, was Garrett all right, and she'd refused to answer. He could have come at the question with a bit more delicacy, the usual social lubrication of small talk, but Marian would probably have been even more . . . _herself_ had he chosen that route.

Infuriating woman. She'd already brightened the red in her hair in preparation for the warmer months, and he hated that he'd noticed that. She'd switch the dark colors of her clothing to brighter ones, soon, and her lipstick would gain more pink and orange tones than the reds and burgundies she wore during the winter. He knew the cycles of her colors and the seasons as well as he knew the patterns of Garrett's life, even if he half wished he didn't.

The other half, well--

Infuriatingly attractive woman.


	2. ~in which marian gives good advice~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrett and Anders get to know each other a little better (not like that!) and Marian's friends all have problems. As is expected.

Garrett wasn't quite sure why he'd told Anders that he tended to fall in love at the drop of a hat. Again, it wasn't like he was going to fall in love with Anders. Probably not. They'd had a nice conversation about how long this marriage was probably going to have to last (most of a decade), how they would manage the whole living together part of it (as it turned out, Anders's hospital was closer to Garrett's place than his own), when they should move in together (next weekend, probably), and a few other things like that. Garrett had shown Anders around his place, including the second bedroom. Anders had been visibly impressed.

Garrett didn't like to think of himself as wealthy, per se, but he supposed no rich people ever did. It was nice that he didn't have to worry where his next rent payment was coming from, even in New York City. But Anders--who was a doctor with a specialty, which meant he should be getting paid ridiculous amounts of money, right?--seemed so gobsmacked at every single one of Garrett's twelve hundred square feet that Garrett ended up shuffling in place and trying not to apologize. "I got a good deal," he said, which was true. The market had been in a slight downturn a year and a half ago, when he'd bought it.

"No, it's--" Anders said, and then hesitated. "I can't quite believe I'll get to live in a place this nice. I feel like I don't match the decor."

"You're a doctor," Garrett said. "You match all the decor."

"Ah, yes," Anders said, a little bitterly.

"Not that I'm just doing this because you're a doctor," Garrett added hastily. "I mean, my sister's a bartender. If you'd been a fellow bartender, I'd still be here." _Probably_ , he added mentally.

"I don't think you're a snob, if that's what you're worried about," Anders said, and all of a sudden the conversation felt a little weird and stiff. How had they ended up there?

Garrett used the pause to check his phone, which was the wrong thing to do because he saw that he had three texts from Fenris and one from Marian. Three texts from Fenris was the equivalent of twenty texts from anyone else, and the text from Marian said, _u migth want to text f back._

"Crap," he said.

"Something wrong?" Anders asked, all alert like he was ready to jump in and help.

"Not really," Garrett said, scanning through the texts from Fenris. _Where are you?_ the first one said. _Typically you're at THM on Thursdays. Did I miss you?_ and _Is everything all right?_ followed.

_I'm fine don't worry just went home early_ , he sent back. _I'll explain later._

"So you already know my twin sister," he said. 

Anders looked a little confused at the seeming change of topic, but he nodded.

"And you know who my parents are now, and you probably picked up that we've got a younger set of twin sibs, Carver and Bethany."

"Yes. Bethany's in med school," Anders said. "Marian's very proud of her."

"Anyway, also on the list of important people is my best friend, Fenris."

Anders nodded. "What are you going to tell him?"

"The truth, if you don't mind," Garrett said. "He's--he's got trust issues. I couldn't lie to him about something like this." He frowned. There was about a ninety percent chance, in his mind, that Anders and Fenris would hate each other at first sight. "He's a great guy, he really is. We've known each other since undergrad. I trust him with everything, and he's loyal to a fault, but he has reason not to be fond of alchemists or magic-users in general. I can't really tell you any more without talking to him first, but . . . part of the reason we get along, I think, is that I really can't do anything other than alchemical stuff. I can't light candles or cast protective wards or anything."

Anders nodded. "So . . . don't do magic around him?"

"I'm not asking you not to," Garrett said, although he kind of was, "but . . . he's my best friend. Maybe try to be aware? I'll talk to him after you leave."

"I'd like to meet him," Anders said, voice cautiously neutral. "Do you have any other friends I need to meet?"

"Most of my other friends are Marian's friends as well. You probably have met Varric and Isabela?"

"The writer and the weeknight server?" At Garrett's nod, Anders nodded back. "Indeed."

"Marian's best friend is Aveline, but she's working nights right now so we don't see her quite as often. Marian's also adopted--you know, faux-adopted--one of the day servers, Merrill, so she hangs out with us sometimes. And when Carver shows up, for some reason he occasionally brings his supervisor, Cullen, who kind of has a stick up his ass. I don't know why." Garrett shrugged. "Other than Barkspawn, that's pretty much everyone."

"And the worldwide network of Amell cousins that you have."

"Eh," Garrett said with a shrug. "There’s Aunt Revka and she’s got four kids, and you seem to know who she is. And then there’s dirtbag Uncle Gamlen and his daughter--I rather like her--but really only Aunt Revka and Solona are particularly connected since Grandmother and Grandfather passed away, and Solona only since her marriage. I don't talk to any of them very often. Once a year at most."

"Ah," Anders said. He looked as if he were going to say something else, but changed his mind. "I've got a handful of roommates, but good riddance to them once I'm out. There's a nursing supervisor named Lirene with whom I'm on good terms, but other than that, I don't have any friends other than Marian, I suppose."

He looked sad for a moment. Garrett ruthlessly suppressed an urge to hug him.

A second later, he wondered why on earth he was suppressing that urge. "Hey," he said. "Look, I know it's a green-card marriage, but I see no reason why we can't be friends anyway."

Anders gave a half-grin, which was an improvement.

"And I know this is the first time we've really met, but one thing you've got to know about me is that I'm a hugger."

"Are you?"

"Not if you don't want to be hugged," Garrett said. "But in general, yes. Unlike Marian, who keeps the bar between her and anyone else who might get too close."

"She does, at that," Anders said, with a chuckle. "Well, I'm perfectly willing to be hugged."

Garrett took that as the invitation it obviously was and stepped closer, wrapping Anders into his arms. He didn't do half-assed "manly" back-clap hugs, he did giant bear hugs, and wow, Anders was thinner than he looked under the baggy scrubs. The top of his head came up a little past Garrett's chin, and he smelled a little like sweat and a lot like antiseptic. Garrett didn't know what it said about him that he liked it. "When's the last time you ate?"

Anders sighed. "I had a sandwich around five," he said. "I'm fine."

Garrett knew when to shut up, despite all appearances to the contrary. "Anyway, I'm not trying to kick you out, but I do need to talk to Fenris and probably my dad tonight. When would be a good time to meet with him, for you? I don't know your schedule."

"I don't work this weekend," Anders said. "I've got tomorrow off, as well."

"We'll find a time, then." They exchanged phone numbers--Anders's number went into Garrett's top-of-the-line phone and Garrett's into Anders's cracked-screen three-year-old model, and wow, he'd have to do something about that--and Anders left.

A minute or two later, another text came from Marian. _on a scale from yes to oh yes how much do u want to sleep with ur fake fiance?_

_STFU_ , he sent back. That was a rabbit hole he wasn’t going to go down. Best to keep it friendly.

Now, he supposed, he had to bite the bullet and call Fenris.

***

One of the only perks in Fenris's building was that he got free, twenty-four-hour access to a gym. It was a small, decrepit room with two treadmills, a half-assed free weights set, and a sad excuse for a heavy punching bag, but nonetheless it existed. He'd warmed up with three miles at a pace he probably shouldn't have done and then wrapped his hands in preparation for taking out his frustration with Marian, but his phone rang--actually rang.

There were only two people who called him, and it wasn't his boss. "Hello, Garrett," he said. "Is something wrong?"

"No, Maker, no," Garrett said, laughing, although his voice held an odd note. "Everything is fine. Are you okay? You sound out of breath."

"I'm in the gym. No one else is here, though, so I can talk."

"Good, good," Garrett said. "Listen, uh, something weird is happening."

"Weird?" Fenris picked at a bit of duct tape holding the punching bag together and then forced himself to stop. "What sort of weird?"

"So you know my sister Marian, obviously--"

"Obviously," Fenris echoed.

"--and you know how she is, and, well, she has this friend who needs help and, um, long story short, I'm getting married?"

Fenris froze. "I believe I'm going to need the long story in its entirety."

Garrett blew out a breath that caused the phone to hiss in his ear. "I was pretty sure you'd say that."

He described the situation--a Norwegian doctor, Meredith Stannard, visa--and summed up with, "And you'll be my best man?"

"That's emotional manipulation," Fenris said, although he was pleased to be asked and let it show in his voice.

"It sure is," Garrett said. "But you will?"

"Of course I will. And when do I get to meet this bridegroom of yours?"

"As soon as I can manage it. He's--fair warning, I implied it before but didn't say straight out, but he's not just a doctor, he's also a Healer, so . . ."

"Ah." He'd been wondering. Commander Stannard rarely took interest in people who were entirely mundane. "Are you expecting me to dislike him?"

"No," Garrett said slowly, "but I thought I would tell you in advance."

"Thank you," Fenris said, and he meant it. "I presume you'll be keeping the fact that this isn't a whirlwind romance under wraps?"

"Yes, exactly. I haven't talked to my dad yet to get all the details but from what I've gathered, we do need to make it a real marriage as much as we can."

"You mean from the movie _Green Card._ "

"I'm not denying it," Garrett said, laughing again. "Look, you want to get lunch tomorrow?"

"I would like that, yes," Fenris said. He worked for the same company that Garrett did, but in a different building, so it wasn't difficult for them to meet for lunch or breaks.

"Great! See you then. And hey, Fenris--thanks."

"You're welcome." He didn't ask what for. There were too many strings between them, and it was probably thanks for all of them.

He hung up, put his phone back on silent, and went back to punching the bag. Resolving his anxiety about Garrett didn't do anything about the Marian situation, as much as he wanted it to, so punch he would.

***

_Called him. Everything's fine._

Marian didn't know why her brother felt it necessary that he tell her that he'd managed to straighten everything out with Fenris, but for some reason some measure of weight lifted off her shoulders. Why should it? Sure, Fenris was practically family, but it wasn't as if Fenris already knew Anders and hated him. (He probably _would_ hate him when they met, but whatever.) It wasn't as if she really cared if Fenris and Garrett were fighting (even though Garrett was a mopey mess when they did fight).

Well, anyway. She finished wiping up the mess that some drunk asshole had made with half a beer and a full plate of nachos and then went to cut up another lemon or four. Lemons disappeared at an alarming rate during the summer, especially when Varric practically swallowed them whole.

Speaking of Varric, did he need a refresher? He had been at his usual table . . . but no, he wasn't there anymore. There was the guy in the suit that Varric and Bela called the Spook; blandly handsome in well-fitting suits, he screamed _government agent_ and he could definitely See, gold Bardic threading on his face but nowhere else. He was also just as definitely not CIA, nor was he with Meredith's folks. Where was Varric, then?

She looked around and, when she didn't see him, tugged on the tiny mental tag that she'd stuck on him years ago. He was still on the premises, because she couldn't find him if he was more than about fifty yards away from her. She didn't really feel any great disturbances in the Force, so she let it go. He'd come back if he needed more beer or wanted more conversation.

Marian turned around to go grab another lemon to slice, when--"Shit!"

"Oh! Marian! I'm sorry!"

Merrill, one of the day servers, had apparently come in when Marian wasn't paying attention and was crouching behind the bar. Marian avoided stepping on her only by quick reflexes. Merrill was young, although not quite as young as she looked and (sometimes) acted, and she was very petite and very pretty; Marian wasn't entirely sure what to do with the vaguely maternal instincts she felt towards her. "Are you okay?" she asked Merrill.

"I--yes?"

"You don't sound very sure about that."

"Well, I'm not. Sure, that is. Not yet." Merrill took a couple of too-quick breaths.

"Can you tell me what's going on?" Marian looked around. "I don't see anyone shady, other than our usual shady folks."

Merrill giggled at that. "No. There was maybe someone--but I'm pretty sure he'd have passed on by now. If it's all the same to you, though, I'll stay here just in case he decides to start looking in random windows.”

"No problem," Marian said, although she was relatively sure it was a health code violation in some way, shape, or form. "While you're down there, can you inventory the bottled beers?"

"I can do that!" Merrill said, and shifted to a more stable position. Marian handed her the clipboard and a pen and let her stay down there.

Instead of asking Merrill more questions, she pulled out her phone and texted Varric. _hey does Merrill have a stalker?_

Varric didn't respond by text, but several minutes later he came in through the back door--the one that led to a little courtyard in the back, not the one that led into the alley--and came up to the bar. "Is Daisy having trouble again?"

"Oh!" Merrill said, from her seat on the floor. "You didn't need to ask Varric about it!"

"We're worried about you, kiddo," Marian said.

"It was just . . . someone was following me. It's not that big of a deal. We're in a big city, right? And . . ." Her eyes got even bigger, if that was possible. "I mean, someone did get mugged right outside my apartment building when I was getting home yesterday, but it's fine! It's New York! What's New York without a mugging or two?"

Marian exchanged a quick glance with Varric. "Someone can walk you home any time you don't feel safe."

"Oh! I wouldn't want to impose!"

"It's not imposing, Daisy," Varric said. "I promise. What's the point of having a day job like mine if I can't take time to walk my friends home? Besides, I need the fresh air."

"Is it really fresh air outside?" Merrill looked vaguely in the direction of the sky. "It was rather smoggy last time I was out."

Which was all of fifteen minutes ago. "As fresh as it gets here. Did you finish the inventory?" Marian asked.

"Almost," Merrill said and got back to her work. 

Marian felt bad for half a second, but she really did need the bottled beers inventoried before the real weekend rush started. "Hey, Varric, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Yeah, sure, Champ. What's up?"

Marian gestured for Isabela to take over the bar itself and followed Varric over to his usual booth; the Spook had left and there was a twenty-dollar tip on the table. Marian pocketed it, to hand to Isabela in a moment, and waited for Varric to sit before she said, "Everything okay with you?"

"Yeah, why?"

She leveled him her best "really?" stare.

Varric sighed. "It's my brother again."

She loved that he folded like a house of cards, but she didn't so much love that Bartrand was back on his bullshit. "Ugh. You need any help?"

"Not yet," he said. "I'll let you know."

He would not let her know. She'd have to force him to accept her help, but she knew that, he knew that, he knew that she knew that, et cetera. "Cool," she said. "I'm gonna get back to work."

"Yeah, me too," he said with a sigh.

She stood up as he pulled out his laptop. "You want another beer?"

"Yeah, Champ, that would be great. I'm gonna need it."

"I'll send Bela over."

When Marian got back behind the counter, Bela was holding a hand out. "I saw you take my tip from the Spook," she said.

"I just did so that no one else would snag it," Marian said, which was a hundred percent true; she put the twenty into Bela's hand. "Calm your tits."

"My tits are party tits," Bela said with a little shimmy.

Marian looked. Bela really did have great tits.

***

Anders spent most of Friday sleeping, in between laundry and packing up his meager belongings. He had a lot of strange, half-formed dreams, too many of which involved Garrett in rather less clothing than he’d been wearing the day before. Although if he lived with the man, he'd be getting to see him shirtless sooner rather than later.

Not that he was going to be waiting to see Garrett shirtless, necessarily. There was an en-suite master bath in addition to the hall bathroom, which meant that unless he was regularly in Garrett’s bedroom, he wouldn’t see Garrett wandering around in a towel. Although was that the kind of question they might ask? "Does your husband get dressed in the bathroom or does he run naked into the bedroom?" "Does your husband have chest hair or not? Does he wax or shave it off?"

He had definitely gone drastically too far down that train of thought. Shaking his head, he decided to start dinner--ramen noodles again, oh boy--but then his phone buzzed and his heart rate decided to spike again. _It's probably not Garrett,_ he told himself. _It's probably just someone at work who wants to trade weekends with you because you don't have kids and they do so you have to say yes, even though you really shouldn't be working that many days in a row._

It was not anyone in the shift-trading group chat. It was, in fact, Garrett. _Hey, my dad says he can meet us at his office tomorrow at 8am. I told him that was unreasonable and we'd be there at 10. Does that work for you?_

Anders did appreciate a man who put in the minimal effort to text with proper grammar and punctuation. It was a useless thing to appreciate, but that had never stopped him before. _10 is fine. What's the address?_

Garrett texted back an address in a posh part of Manhattan. _I'll meet you out front five minutes to, okay?_

_Okay._ Anders was starting to feel a little bit like the legendary virgin marrying a billionaire, only he hadn't been a virgin for more than a decade (assuming virginity was a legitimate construct anyway) and he didn't _think_ Garrett was a billionaire. Millionaire, easily, but probably not a billionaire.

What did one even wear to a . . . meeting to arrange a green-card marriage? Anders considered his woefully small wardrobe. He knew he had a suit, because he'd had to do interviews in it at some point, but he didn't really know how well it fit. It was early enough that he did have time to run out and buy something, if he could find something he liked . . .

Instead, he texted Marian. _What does one wear to a meeting with one's prospective groom's father who is also a lawyer when it's a green-card wedding?_

_omg ur such a drama queen just wear a shirt with a collar and nice pants_

_shoes too u should we3ar shoes_

_How did you even get a 3 into that word?_

_im talented_

He had a shirt with a collar, right? He had to have more than one. He wore them to work occasionally, when he wasn't in the emergency room or if he had a real meeting or something. Ah, there they were.

_wear the blue one_

_Marian, how did you even know I have a blue shirt?_

_every man over liek 13 has a blue oxford shirt. just wear that 1 and gray pants if u have them or if not navy or brown is fine_

He did have gray pants. They were even clean, or at least clean-ish. The shirt definitely needed an ironing. _Tie?_

_ugh ffs yes not something terrible tho_

He snapped a picture of all four ties that he owned.

_NOT THE GD ONE WITH THE PERIODIC TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS ON THAT WHY DO YOU EVEN OWN THAT TIE_

_It was a gift!_ A gift from Karl, actually. He probably should get rid of it.

_wear the paisly one_

_pasley?_

_paisley_

_u kno which one_

_You put more effort into texting badly than it would take to text well._

_shut up ur not my dad_

_What's he like, BTW?_

_adult garrett basically but even more social justice warrior_

_like in a good way_

_u kno what i mean_

_Marian, you're a social justice rogue, so I think I know what you mean._

_scuse me im a social justic mage_

_My apologies, fair lady._

_fuck off asshole_

_have fun marrying my gd brother_

_btw yes ill be yuor broad of honor_

Anders started. _I wasn't even going to ask. I assumed you'd stand up for your brother?_

_no hse gonna ask fen so i get to "stand up for" you_

"Fen" must be the semi-mysterious Fenris.

_r u reading jane austin or something_

_*austen_

Anders decided not to answer that particular question. Marian could speak with a BBC accent if she chose to; he'd heard her do it. Plus she'd obviously read Jane Austen at some point in the past, although he didn't think that the books actually used "stand up for" so much as "stand up with," meaning to dance with, rather than to--Well. _Thank you so much for all your help, Marian. I really mean it. If there's ever anything I can do for you, just ask._

_ugh sincerity burns yw don't make me look foolish_

Anders smiled at his phone and put it away.

The next morning, bright and early, he woke up, showered, put on the outfit that Marian had dictated, and then checked his phone. At 3am there was a text from her that said, _ok the real reason u cant wear the elements tie is bc garrett has the SAME FKN TIE and i bet u 20$ that hes fukkin wearing it_

Anders laughed all the way to the subway stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, cool, chapter-specific notes now. Anyway, leftover from chapter 1: Nordbotten is a random town in the Anderfels that sounded like it would make a good last name.
> 
> In this chapter: I think y'all should know I had "My Heart to Break" by Kim Petras in my head while writing it. (They play it at my gym. I'm definitely too old for this shit.)


	3. ~in which details are finalized and introductions are made~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm Hawke is intimidating, but that doesn't stop Anders's thirst for Garrett. Meanwhile, Marian has to use her phone _as an actual phone_ more than once in a day.

Garrett adjusted his lucky tie, which all of a sudden felt like the choking tie as he stared at the giant white edifice of his father's law firm's building. Malcolm Hawke had left the partnership track at his hoity-toity law firm to be the pro-bono coordinator at a different, equally prestigious law firm when Garrett was in high school. He'd apparently never regretted a minute of it. He still had a big office in a fancy high-rise in Manhattan. While Garrett knew that he was, arguably, the most accomplished of his siblings, he still felt a little like a failure when faced with a building that could have had his father's name on it, had he chosen that route.

Heels clicked on the pavement behind him; Garrett turned to see Anders and oh, what a difference a day of sleep, a shower, and better clothes made. Anders had shaved--Garrett missed the red beard a little, but oh well--and tied his hair back into a neat ponytail instead of a half-up crooked attempt, as it had been the other day. He had on a light blue shirt and dark gray pants with black shoes and a blue paisley tie. The dark circles under his eyes were less prominent and he looked less haunted, for whatever reason.

And he was laughing at Garrett.

"What?" Garrett asked. "Is there something in my beard?" He knew there wasn't, but still.

"Your sister bet you'd be wearing that tie," Anders said, "and I owe her twenty dollars."

"Well, it is my lucky tie," Garrett said. Bethany and Carver had pooled their allowances to buy it for him when he graduated undergrad. It had the periodic table of the elements on it, and he wore it any time that he needed to be fancy at work, plus when he'd defended his dissertation. It had obviously worked.

Anders's smile deepened, became more genuine. "I have the exact same tie."

"You do?"

"Well, my first degree was in biochemistry. It was--ah, a friend's idea of a joke."

An ex-boyfriend, Garrett translated. Or maybe an ex-girlfriend. "That's awesome, biochemistry," he said. "Let's go inside."

Without thinking, he held out a hand, and Anders took it.

Objectively, Garrett knew he looked like his dad. He also knew that his dad was as big as he was, and being that he was a lawyer, Malcolm didn't lean as hard into the goofy persona as Garrett did. But he also remembered his dad splashing in a kiddie pool with all four screaming Hawke children and singing songs to the dogs. So he was a little surprised when Anders stiffened and took half a step back when they got to his dad's office.

"Garrett," Malcolm said, standing behind his desk, glasses on, holding a manila file folder. He was wearing a suit jacket, probably Savile Row tailoring, and he wasn't smiling.

"Maker, Dad, are you trying to scare the pants off of Anders?" That was, of course, what he was trying to do, but jeez.

Malcolm Hawke's face broke into a wry grin. "Sorry," he offered to Anders, who nodded cautiously. "Do have a seat."

They sat, Garrett sprawling and Anders perched carefully on the edge of the chair. "Anyway, Dad, kill the high-powered lawyer face and meet your future son-in-law," Garrett said. "Malcolm Hawke, attorney, meet Dr. Anders Nordbotten, infectious disease specialist and ER physician."

"Oh, that's cute, you'll be Dr. Hawke and Dr. Hawke," Malcolm said.

"Wait, who said he's changing his name?" Garrett said.

"You've got a doctorate?" Anders said.

"I don't use it," Garrett said. "I mean, I don’t use the title. I use the topic of my dissertation nearly every day. Dad, _what_?"

"The short list of recommendations: that you change your name--I suppose it could both be to Nordbotten, but, well." He shrugged. "It's not an American-sounding name, but it's pretty clearly Scandinavian in origin, and the mundane government doesn't care about deporting white people. If you were Fenris or Isabela, I'd be worried, but you're not."

"Dad, Isabela's family has been American longer than ours has." To Anders he said, "She's Puerto Rican."

"And Fenris . . . isn't white, either?"

"Genetic testing says he's mostly Middle Eastern, but they can't rule out some eastern Indian provinces, either. But his last name is Wolfe, so he's safer than Isabela Ramirez."

Garret was sure Anders didn't quite get all the implications there, but it was probably best to explain later. "Any other suggestions?"

"Indeed. I'd suggest that you live together. That you do your best to make it seem like a real relationship, whatever that means. And--" Malcolm looked pained. "--that you don't tell your mother that it's a green-card marriage."

Garrett groaned. "You're right," he said. "That wouldn't go well."

"Why not?" Anders asked. "I don't know your mother, but would Marian have told her?"

"No, Marian doesn't tell her anything."

"Not if she can help it," Malcolm agreed. "I'm happy to tell Leandra that I knew that you were dating a couple weeks to a month ago, but it's still going to have to be a whirlwind romance, I'm afraid." He leveled a grin at Garrett. "Not that it's entirely out of character."

"Dad." Garrett put his face in his hands. 

"Anyway, welcome to the family, Anders," Malcolm said. Garrett still wasn't looking, but he was pretty sure they were shaking hands. "I've got some documents for you to sign, since I'm sure you're aware by this point that Garrett has quite a bit of money. You're welcome to take them home and consult your own attorney, and I mean that--there will be no coercion here. Have the two of you thought about whether you'd like to combine your finances?"

From there it got into a lot of painful nuts and bolts. It turned out that Anders did, in fact, make quite a livable wage, even by New York standards, but he donated every single penny beyond the ones he needed to maintain a minimum lifestyle to various organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and a number of small charities in the area. Garrett looked at him in amazement, and Anders shrugged helplessly. "I really don't need all that much," he said.

"It's all right to keep a little more than the bare necessities," Garrett said gently. "But that's fine. I have more than enough, too." He donated quite a bit, but he also put a lot of it aside in case of . . . well, in case of a lot of different emergencies. This was not necessarily the kind of emergency he'd foreseen, but still.

Anders took the folder full of prenups home to look at; they'd made a certain number of decisions that already involved a fair amount of redlining in the contracts. Finances were tedious and dull, but if Garrett was going through the time and expense to marry a guy to keep him and his visa safe from evil Aunt Meredith, well, he wasn't going to half-ass it.

Malcolm sat back in his chair at the end of the meeting. "Well, that went well, I think?"

Garrett and Anders both nodded.

"You're going to have to practice some things and get to know each other rather quickly if you want this to pass your mother's inspection, though. The date you chose is only a little over a month away, and she's going to insist on helping with the wedding planning at least a little."

"There are going to be, like, six people at the wedding total," Garrett said, and then re-counted. His family was five, other than him, and Fenris made six, but the two of them made eight. "Maybe ten. What planning is necessary?"

"Announcements, flowers, tuxedos, a dinner afterward," Malcolm said. "Garrett, you can't exactly run away to Atlantic City and get married."

"Why not?"

"Leandra will kill you. You're the first of the children to _get_ married."

Garrett sighed. "Look, we all know that Bethany's going to want a fantasy wedding with lace and roses and--" He waved a hand in the air. "--stuff. Mother can do the whole Mother of the Bride thing with her."

He'd always figured he'd get married, but the wedding wasn't the important part for him. The partnership, the seventy years of love and friendship afterward, that was what he'd looked forward to. And he certainly wasn't giving up all hope of that by marrying Anders, just . . . delaying it a bit. He put all that out of his mind, though.

"You know it's not going to work like that," Malcolm said.

"Yeah," Garrett said. "Yeah. I'll work on it."

Anders looked, quite rightly, terrified. "Hey," Garrett said, leaning over and putting a hand on his. "It'll be fine."

"Fine," Anders said. "Yes."

***

Marian woke up two hours before she wanted to because her damn phone was buzzing, and why on earth was it buzzing at ten in the morning? She was going to sleep in until noon, damnit, at the very least. She'd closed last night and had managed to stagger up to her apartment at around five am. If it was Anders . . .

It wasn't, though. It was Merrill, one of the three people whose calls rang or buzzed even when the Do Not Disturb was turned on. "Hey," she said. "Everything okay?"

"Well," Merrill said, "yes, I'm fine, I guess, but I'm at the library and the man from Thursday, he's here? And you said I should call if--"

"Yeah, of course," Marian said, sitting up and trying to pretend she was awake. "Calling me was definitely the right thing to do. Shit, uh, what library?"

Merrill named the branch, and Marian thought she should know where it was but she didn’t. Normally she’d just use her phone, but--“Stay on the line, Merrill,” she said. “I’m gonna grab my tablet.”

She grabbed her tablet--no, it was dead--her laptop to see if she could get there quickly. She could throw on clothes in like half a second and she'd done a half-assed job of taking off her makeup, but it was fine.

The library was about twenty minutes of travel away, and Marian was wondering exactly how she knew that until she realized that Fenris's apartment was about two buildings over. Well, shit. "Hey, Merrill?"

"Yes?"

"Are you safe for at least the next five or ten minutes?"

"Oh, yes. I'm sitting in a study room."

"I can get there in about twenty minutes to a half hour, but I know someone who lives very close by. He's my brother's best friend. I can get him to walk you home, and he's at least as scary as I am."

"Oh, is it the man with the white hair and the silver lines everywhere?"

"Yes, him," Marian said. "His name's Fenris. If he's not available, I promise I'll be there, but I'm going to try him first, if that's okay with you."

"I've talked to him once or twice. He's very nice to me, even though he doesn't seem to enjoy talking to you all that much." Merrill giggled. "Either that or he just finds you very distracting."

"I am the most distracting," Marian said, because there really wasn't anything else she could say to that. "I'll call you back in a couple minutes."

"Sure thing."

Marian didn't want to call Fenris, but she wasn't a hundred percent sure he'd read a text from her right away and she knew he'd answer the phone, mostly because he'd assume that something was wrong with Garrett. She felt guilty for an eighth of a second about exploiting that fact, and then reasoned that Merrill's stalker situation was at least as terrible. She hit the green button to call him and waited.

"Yes?" He answered after only two rings. "Is Garrett all right?"

"He's fine," Marian said, "but my friend Merrill--do you know her?"

"Daytime server, very small, pointy-faced?"

It wasn't the most charitable description of Merrill, but it was accurate enough. "Yes. She's at the library up the street from you and her stalker is there. I'm twenty-odd minutes away, you're two. Can you walk her home?"

"Of course. Where in the library is she? And what does her stalker look like? Do you know if she's reported him to the police?"

"She's in a study room--I'll text you which one. I don't know what her stalker looks like, other than he's a man. I also don't know if she's reported him to the police, but it wouldn't hurt if you could gently encourage her to do that, too. Thank you."

"Merrill doesn't deserve a stalker," he said, probably by way of "you're welcome."

"No one does," Marian said, and hung up on him. She reasoned that he was going to hang up on her anyway, so it wasn't really a problem that she got to it first.

She called Merrill back. "Fenris will be over in a minute or two," she said. "What study room are you in?"

"The one all the way to the left on the first floor," Merrill said. "Oh, I hope you thanked him."

"I literally said the exact words, 'thank you,' so yes, I did, but you should feel free to thank him as well." Marian thought about what she said and grimaced. "I mean, you shouldn't necessarily feel indebted to him. He's doing it mostly as a favor for Garrett, who can definitely handle it. You know. Them being old friends and whatnot." Ugh, she sounded like Garrett, or worse, Anders. "But I'm going to text him what room you're in and he'll see you shortly."

"Thank you so much, Marian," Merrill said. "I can't repay you."

"Don't even worry about it," Marian said.

She actually said "goodbye" to Merrill before she hung up, because she wasn't actually an ill-mannered heathen (heathen, certainly, but at least she _knew_ what good manners were supposed to be), and texted Fenris, _all the way on the left on the 1st floor_.

_Thank you._ was his response, complete with punctuation.

Marian waited another five minutes until she got a, _He's here! He's wearing all black and looks very intimidating. Thank you again!_ from Merrill before pulling the covers over her head and going back to sleep.

***

Merrill chatted a mile a minute as Fenris walked her home. He wasn't sure he'd officially met her at any point, but she'd greeted him like an old friend--useful for his current purposes but something that normally rubbed him the wrong way--and hadn't stopped talking since they'd left the library.

He'd figured out who her stalker was, a short, stocky man with reddish hair that rang a bell although he hadn’t managed to place it yet, and had given the man his best glare as he'd walked by. Merrill had noticed. "Oh, no, you didn't have to do that," she said. "Now he knows who you are, and you might be in danger."

"I'll be fine," Fenris said.

"Well, of course you will! You look like you are definitely capable of taking care of yourself. I never meant to imply that you couldn't, oh dear, but, well, he's very good at finding people." 

She changed the subject to how easily she got lost, but while she spoke, Fenris looked her over out of the corner of his eye. Unlike Garrett and Marian and some of their friends, he couldn't turn off the magical Sight that allowed him to see the purple and red lines covering Merrill's body. He also saw a sickly orange line running down her back, in a place where she wouldn't easily be able to see it herself, partially hidden under her hair. Had Marian not noticed it? He supposed the color did look a little as if the red had gotten partially corrupted by purple, but it was very clear to him that she had a strand of someone else's power stuck to her.

He couldn't do anything about it, but . . . He sighed. Marian could.

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I talking too much? I do that," she said, a little sadly.

"No, you are talking exactly the right amount," Fenris said. "I've been told I do not talk enough."

"No! You also talk exactly the right amount!" she said, and she was off and running again.

It was about a ten-minute walk to her place, in exactly the wrong direction for his peace of mind. Her neighborhood bordered a much safer one, and he wished she’d lived about four blocks to the north of where she did live. Although he didn't manage to get her to talk about the stalker, he did manage to suggest that she should perhaps speak to the police. Somewhere in her monologue he thought she might have given him a laundry list of reasons that she had not spoken to the police, but none of them seemed particularly determinative in his mind.

He was aware that he wasn't a young woman, though, so perhaps his view of what was determinative was different from hers. He'd have to ask someone if there was something he was missing.

Marian. He'd have to talk to Marian. He might be able to avoid it by talking with Garrett, but Garrett would probably just recommend that he talk to Marian directly.

He left Merrill at her own apartment, walking her all the way to her door; she stuck her hand out for a handshake, and he grasped it, feeling how tiny her bones were. She was nearly the physical opposite of Marian, despite sharing her fair skin and dark hair. Marian could be run over by a Mack truck and would get up and flip the driver off.

Not that being small of stature or fine-boned made a person less tough. Merrill lived alone in a small, pristine apartment, from what he could see of it, barely more than a single room and a closet or two, but she worked hard at the bar. She'd been at the library to look up something, Fenris hadn't quite caught what, but he gathered that she was an amateur historian of something in the architecture or furniture realm.

He gave her his number before he left, though. "Call me if you need another escort," he said, and she promised that she would.

He didn't quite believe her, but at least Marian would know she could call him on Merrill's behalf.

Marian had closed the bar last night, which meant that she would not be fit for company until some time after noon. It was well before noon at the moment. Garrett and Anders had just gone into their meeting with the Hawke family patriarch, so he would be no help.

Not that Fenris needed help to talk to Marian, he just . . . Turning sharply on one heel, he headed not for his own apartment, but for Garrett's. He had a key, of course, and Barkspawn would appreciate an extra walk.

***

Malcolm Hawke was terrifying. Anders would stand by that statement even after Malcolm had stopped intentionally trying to terrify him, and was still willing to stand by the statement at the end of the two-hour meeting.

And in five short weeks, Malcolm Hawke would be his father-in-law, for better or for worse.

Well, for about ten years, give or take some immigration shenanigans. They hadn't exactly made a plan to divorce in ten years, but Anders couldn't imagine keeping Garrett away from whoever his big true love was for longer than that. He also didn't doubt that Garrett was going to find a big true love someday, probably while they were still technically married--the man was made for some giant, sweeping romance, of the kind that rarely existed off the silver screen. Anders himself, on the other hand, was made for a string of disappointments. This he knew, and it was fine. He'd hopefully have enough friends to keep him going when that eventually happened. Marian probably wouldn't desert him, and maybe he could continue to be friends with Garrett after they were done with this . . . legal situation.

Sure. That's what he'd call it. A legal situation.

When they were done, Anders tucked the folder under his arm and made to head for the subway station, but Garrett stopped him with a touch to his elbow. "Hey. Unless you really have something else to do today, why don't we head to my place? I can make lunch and then we can talk about the mother situation."

"The mother situation?"

Garrett rolled his eyes. "Yeah. It's a situation. But we'll get through it. Anyway, food?"

Anders couldn't think of a good reason not to go, other than some strange desire to deny himself Garrett's company, but then again, he'd be living with the man in about a week. Why should he avoid him now? "That sounds great."

Garrett knew the fastest route to his own place and they were there before Anders could register that it was definitely lunchtime, but when they got to Garrett's door, Anders hesitated. Something was off. He looked again, more carefully, and said, "There's someone in your condo."

"It's probably Marian," Garrett said easily, which, okay, fair enough. And even if it wasn't, Garrett was big enough to take on any other intruder.

It wasn't Marian. It was a man, Anders thought, dark-skinned and green-eyed with a shock of white hair, seated on the couch and looking over the back warily. "Hey, Fenris," Garrett said easily. "What's up?"

"Came to walk your dog," Fenris said, and wow, Anders hadn't expected that voice out of that particular person. He'd heard it before, though, at the bar once or twice while he'd been dozing in a corner. "Then he demanded attention, and I felt generous enough to provide it."

"He wouldn't let you go if you didn't pet him, would he," Garrett said, laughing. He rounded the corner of the couch and crouched down, presumably to pet the dog. "Hey, buddy."

Definitely the dog. However, he'd left Anders vaguely stranded by the door. _Likely because he thinks you can fend for yourself,_ Anders chided himself. He came in a little farther, untied and removed his shoes because you didn't toe off $200 dress shoes, and set his manila folder of legal documents on an end table.

Fenris hadn't overlooked him; Anders hadn't expected him to, what with the wariness in his gaze and also what Garrett had said. But he still hadn't said anything.

"Hello," Anders said, coming around the couch himself to see Garrett wrestling with his giant dog in dress clothes, what was he thinking? It was charming, but he didn't allow himself to be distracted. Much. "I'm Anders."

"Fenris."

Anders hadn't held his hand out to shake, sensing it wouldn't be welcome, and Fenris didn't either. "So you're the best friend."

"So you're the green-card fiance."

This was going badly. Anders was fairly certain it wasn't entirely his own fault, although Fenris was squinting a little and looking away from him. That was odd. The sun wasn't behind him and he wasn't wearing any jewelry or anything that would catch the light. What was going on? "That's me," he said, perhaps a touch belatedly.

"Fenris, Anders is a doctor, an infectious disease specialist. Anders, Fenris works for Kirkwall Corp with me, although in a different building. We went to undergrad together. Obviously sometimes he gets bored and walks my dog."

"I didn't expect you home for another hour," Fenris said, but he was grudgingly sounding a little more pleasant.

"And Anders recognized Barkspawn's name, and he owns an elements tie, so he can't be entirely bad," Garrett said, as if Fenris hadn't spoken.

"He could still," Fenris said, but it almost sounded like a joke. "Yankees or Mets?"

"Ah, I'm not much of a baseball fan," Anders said, "but forced to choose, the Mets."

"That is an acceptable answer," Fenris said. He was still squinting and looking at the floor. "Is it possible that you can turn yourself down?"

Down? "I don't quite know what you mean," Anders said carefully.

Garrett blinked and looked up, even though Barkspawn was licking his face. "Hey, Anders, I probably forgot to mention that Fenris's Sight is permanently stuck on, so if you can glow a little less green, you won't hurt his eyes."

"Oh. My apologies." Anders didn't quite know how to stop glowing--he'd never had it asked of him before--but he tried to concentrate on, well, not Healing anything, and that seemed to help, if Fenris's shoulders were any guide.

Then Anders made the mistake of using his own Sight to look at Fenris, and he bit his tongue before he could say anything untoward. He should ask Garrett, he thought, or maybe Marian, but not Fenris himself, because while he was chased in silver on every visible inch of skin, Anders shouldn’t have been able to See the silver if it was just the lines of alchemical magic. But he could, because it was . . . angry. Wounds, only partially healed. Anders didn't think he could Heal them, but he wanted to try. He knew better than to Heal anyone like this who hadn’t given consent, though, and he didn’t think that Fenris would give consent.

(Fenris also had several broken bones that had healed just a little bit off, which in Anders's experience was a sign of a rough childhood or perhaps a professional sports career, and he knew which one he was putting money on. He definitely should keep his mouth shut.)

"You're glowing again," Garrett said, still mostly under Barkspawn, and Anders stopped looking at Fenris and tried to dampen his light.

"Thank you," Fenris said rather gravely, and Anders nodded.

To Garrett Fenris said, "Are you going to continue rolling around on the floor with your dog in a three-hundred-dollar shirt?"

Three-hundred-dollar shirt? Anders's entire outfit was three hundred dollars, and he had spent most of it on a pair of shoes.

"Oh, I suppose I shouldn't," Garrett said, but he only half-heartedly shoved Barkspawn aside.

"So Meredith Stannard has it out for you," Fenris said.

"Shh, Maker, don't say her name," Garrett said, jumping up from the ground to look around exaggeratedly. "You'll summon her."

"Wouldn't you have to say it three times?" Anders said.

"Not with her," Garrett said. "She's probably not listening, but jeez. Shouldn't you be the one who's being extra-careful?"

"I've never met the woman," Anders said. "I've had run-ins with a few other Watchmen, but not her."

"Hope you never do," Garrett said.

"Is she that much worse than the rest of them?" Anders said. "All the ones I've met are . . . Well, they seem to be deeply invested in the wrong things. I'm not sure there's really a point to them existing anymore, if that's how they behave."

Garrett winced and made a cut-off gesture at his neck, behind Fenris, but it was too late.

"No Watchmen?" Fenris said, and it would have taken a much less observant person to miss the danger in his tone. "So it would be all right, in your mind, to have Healers, Mages, and Alchemists all go unsupervised?"

"Well, the mundane police--"

"--Are useless here," Fenris said, his statement final. "Magic workers must have an authority to whom they answer, and not some nebulous Maker or Creator or whatnot. If the current authority is corrupt, the correct answer is to root out the corruption, not to remove the authority altogether."

"There's a hierarchy in place in each Guild--" Anders knew he was digging himself a hole, and with Garrett's best friend, but he couldn't stop himself. He’d never had a positive interaction with the Watchmen. In fact, he’d gotten a dozen talkings-to by the Watchmen for things that the Healer’s Guild didn’t care about policing, such as using his Healing ability outside of work and for self-defense, once, long ago. The fine the Watchmen had imposed upon him, as well as the ridiculous kangaroo court that had imposed the fine, were both so absurd that half the time, it was difficult to take them seriously.

"That does not serve to police, merely to create rules and advocate." Fenris's delivery was clipped to the extreme. "We need a police system that understands the world, and Meredith can be challenged. The fact that no one has done so says more about the other Guilds than it does about the Watchmen themselves." He stood, shook off a fine coating of dog hair, and headed to the door. "Garrett, I will see you soon."

He let himself out and closed the door firmly behind him.

"Well, that went poorly," Anders said.

"Yeah, I . . ." Garrett sighed and scratched his beard. "It's a topic that Fenris and I generally agree to disagree on. I really should have told you more, but . . ." He sighed again. "The first twenty years of his life were shit."

"I thought that might be the case," Anders said. "I, ah. He has a good deal of poorly-healed breaks. It was either that or a career as a mixed-martial-art fighter."

"Well, a little of that, too, actually," Garrett said. "He does Brazilian jiu-jitsu, has for years. But . . . I really can't get into details without asking him first, and I haven't had time to, but . . . suffice it to say that he _does_ have a reason for his opinions. I just can't fully agree with his assertion that it isn't the office that corrupted Aunty Em, it's her own personal failings."

"What about whoever held the job before her?"

"He was sending them down that path anyway. He just retired before it really went that far. And Uncle Orsino and Aunt Wynne--the heads of the Mages' and Healers' Guilds, but you probably knew that--simply can't stand up to her, which leaves Aunt Debra and my father hanging alone. And his day job is so busy that, well, it's just a mess." Garrett sat down and put his head in his hands. "I can't even be mad with either of you, because you're both just speaking from what you know, but it's difficult."

Anders wanted to say he'd just keep his mouth shut around Fenris, but he knew that would be difficult. "Do you need to go after him?"

"No," Garrett said. "That wasn't a flounce. He was just removing himself from the situation. I'll probably text him tonight and we'll talk about it."

"I don't know what to say, Garrett." He didn't, he really didn't.

"Yeah. I suppose you didn't quite sign on for this."

"An opinionated best friend isn't exactly a deal-breaker."

"Between that and the fact that we're going to have to pretend to be in love for my mother, I understand if maybe you're having second thoughts."

"I'm not," Anders said without thinking.

Garrett gave a rueful half-grin. "Yeah, I mean, I guess you don't really have a choice."

"No, that's--" Anders sat down on the couch and a moment later, he had a lapful of dog. "Well, this was unexpected." He skritched behind Barkspawn's ears and tried to put his thoughts into some sort of order. "My lack of choice here doesn't really factor in. I mean, pretending to be in love for your mother is only a temporary situation."

"True." Garrett perked up a little at that. "And I can work on Fenris. He's--I promise, he's a good guy. He's just prickly."

Anders nodded but didn't have anything to say to that, either. "What are we going to have to do to sell your mother on this being a whirlwind romance?"

Garrett groaned and fell over onto the floor. Barkspawn jumped off Anders's lap, probably leaving paw-shaped bruises on his legs, and went to make sure that Garrett was okay, by the looks of it. "Ugh, no licking my face, doggo, you know better." He sat back up. "Look, unless you're touch-averse, we're going to have to touch a lot more. If you are touch-averse, we can work around that, but if you aren't, what are you going to need to get used to me touching you?"

That was very sweet of him, but . . . "I'm not touch-averse," Anders said. Quite the opposite, really, but he wasn't going to say that. "Practice wouldn't hurt."

"True," Garrett said. He levered himself off the floor and onto the couch, much to Barkspawn's confusion, and turned towards Anders. "So, can I kiss you?"

"Um. Yes?" That wasn't what Anders had expected; he'd thought a little light cuddling, maybe another hug, some hand-holding, but he wasn't going to say no to a kiss. 

"Okay," Garrett said easily and moved in, one hand going to Anders's jaw, tilting his head slightly. And then all of a sudden he was very close, and his lips were right there--

The kiss was short and sweet, good for a first kiss at the end of a lunch date, warm lips and the barest hint of tongue, but oh, it set Anders aflame from scalp to toes. It had been a while since the last time he'd been kissed, at least romantically (or faux-romantically), and his body reacted as if it were a real kiss that might lead to other things.

Well. Most of his body reacted thusly. His stomach, on the other hand, growled.

Garrett pulled away, laughing. "I suppose I promised you lunch."

"You did," Anders said apologetically.

"Good first try, though," Garrett said, standing. "I bet we can do better."

Better? Only if Anders wanted his hair singed off. "We should try," he said, trying to affect disinterest and certain he failed.

“Later,” Garrett said, and oh, Anders hoped that wasn’t an empty promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leftover notes from previous chapters: Yes, I'm calling the Templars the Watchmen, because Templars exist in the 'real' world. Yes, everyone's human.
> 
> From this chapter: Look, I don't think Fenris actually cares about baseball much either, but I know he's not a Yankees fan.


	4. ~in which a wild ex-lover or two makes an appearance~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marian doesn't fight with Fenris. Garrett doesn't kiss Anders (much). Fenris doesn't whistle the theme from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." Anders does give Garrett beard skritches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been putting more specific content notes on my tumblr, for lack of a better place to put it. [Here's this week's installment.](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/180346910333/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-4)

Marian thought really hard about calling her brother after she knew his meeting with Dad and Anders was done, but decided not to. If he wanted to tell her anything, he'd call her himself.

Okay, that was a lie. She figured that Anders would show up at the bar at some point that evening and she would be able to pump him for information. That was probably five or seven hours from then, but she could wait. Really, she could.

Besides, she had laundry to do, and grocery shopping, and probably she should reorder some stuff for the bar, because they were almost out of the Brooklyn Brewery bottles and they were running low on imported cider.

Before she could do any of that, or do anything more than pull on yoga pants and a hoodie, the buzzer rang.

She stood stock-still for a moment. In all honesty, she'd completely forgotten what she was supposed to do when someone actually used the buzzer instead of just texting her to come down and get them. There was a box by the door, right? She hit the button and said, "Yeah?"

"It's me."

It was Fenris. What on earth was Fenris doing at her place? She hit the other button to unlock the door for him, and then dove into her room to put on a bra under the hoodie. Sure, she'd known him for a decade, but there were still some things you didn't do.

He knocked on the door to her actual apartment, three short raps, and she went over to unlock it and let him in. "What are you doing here?" she asked when he got inside.

"Nice place you've got here, Marian. Why, of course I'd like to sit down. Water would be great."

Marian narrowed her eyes and very maturely refrained from punching him. She turned around and went into the kitchen, all of four steps away, and poured him a glass of water from the Brita filter. Instead of handing it to him, she set it on a coaster on the coffee table--the coasters were stolen from the bar and the coffee table was from IKEA, but at least it was cleanish and her couch only had throw pillows and blankets on it. Sitting down at the other end of the couch, she raised her eyebrows at him and waited.

He joined her, an odd look on his face, but he didn't delay for any bullshit reason and took only a single sip of water before speaking. "Merrill appears to have a piece of someone else's magic on her."

"Goddamn motherfucking shitballs," Marian spat and stood up to start pacing. "How did I not notice?"

Marian had been called a lot of names over the years, some of which were accurate; she was certainly a rude bitch, and she’d let people call her a fuckin’ dyke as much as they wanted, because it didn’t mean anything to her. She even preferred to let people think she was merely ("merely") the bartender instead of the bar-owner and was quite happy to let people think she was some uneducated fool instead of graduate summa cum laude of NYU's MBA program--all of that suited her purposes from time to time. But one thing she was _not_ was lax in watching out for her friends, which was why she was so angry at herself for missing this.

"It's mostly hidden by her hair," Fenris said, "and it's similar enough to her magic that I had also missed it."

"That's not an excuse for me," she said. 

"You're right, it isn't."

Marian didn't react to that, because what was she going to do, disagree with him when she'd literally just said the same thing? He got an even stranger look on his face, but it passed.

"When do you think you'll see her next to fix it?"

"Uh, she's on the schedule this afternoon. I might go in a little early and make sure I catch her. She's on until eight."

Fenris nodded. He took another sip of water and said, "I'll get going."

Marian held still for a moment and then, knowing she'd regret this immediately, sighed and said, "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong with me," he said, because of course that's what he would say.

"You don't have to talk to me, because Maker knows neither of us really wants that, but, y'know, don't explode all over Merrill or something."

"I would _never_ do that," he said, looking vaguely insulted, but that also passed, or at least transmuted into a weird sort of resignation. "I confess I came here expecting a fight and relishing the thought of one."

"I'm too fucking tired to fight with you right now, Fen," Marian said. "I got to bed a little after five. Do you have a problem with me?"

"Not outside the usual," he said, clearly trying to make a joke.

"Does this have something to do with Anders?"

Fenris's jaw tightened. "I'll see you this evening, Marian."

Okay, it was about Anders. Marian knew full well why Anders and Fenris might hate each other; she'd had, you know, at least one conversation with each of them. She also knew exactly what to say to pick a fight right at this very moment, and boy, was it tempting, but . . . Nah. "Hey, so, use your words, tell Garrett how you feel, don't let it fester. Anders is a smart man. You should be able to work something out between the three of you."

"You make it sound as if I'm your brother's other spouse," Fenris said.

Marian couldn't actually tell if that was supposed to be a joke or not, but she responded as if it weren't. "Yeah, well, close enough. It's just friendly advice." He wouldn't start or continue a fight if it seemed like she was trying to be reasonable, she knew, although reasonableness didn't come easily to her. "You don't have to take it."

"Curse you, Marian, for being an adult in this situation," he said with a grim smile.

"And curse me for introducing Anders to Garrett?"

"Perhaps a little." This time he actually did leave, without saying goodbye because why would he possibly say goodbye when it was just her?

As the door closed, she yelled in its general direction, "Bye, Fenris! Have a good walk home! Don't worry, I'll put your glass away! I'll have a nice day, thanks!"

She got no response, which was just fine with her.

More interestingly, why _hadn't_ she wanted to fight with him? She certainly hadn't had any coffee yet, so she was indeed fucking tired, but she typically got about seven hours of sleep and felt, if not refreshed, at least able to deal with the day.

Coffee. Right. She went to make herself some, only to find that she'd already done so and it was sitting, reheating itself in the pot. "Thanks, Past Me," she said, and poured a cup. She'd eaten breakfast or lunch or whatever the meal was already, but she grabbed an apple out of the fridge--it wasn't mushy yet, thank goodness--and went back to sit on the couch.

If she'd fought with him, they probably both would have felt better. That was how it worked, right? Then why didn't she do that?

It was too early for this introspection shit. She put on Netflix and curled up under a blanket.

***

Kissing Anders had been nice. It was quite pleasant. Really, it had been. Garrett was looking forward to doing it again, in the same way that he looked forward to the next time he had pizza.

All of that was a lie. Kissing Anders had been much more than nice. For such a tame kiss, it had nearly set Garrett's socks on fire. He was looking forward to their next kiss--which he had declined to initiate after lunch, deciding instead that they should sit next to each other on the couch and chat about strategy--as much as he looked forward to when his sister made apple pie.

(Marian made a _killer_ apple pie, but she only did about twice a year, insisting that it would stop being special if she made it more often. She was probably correct about the pie, but Garrett would have liked the opportunity to find out.

No, he was pretty sure that Marian’s apple pie would always be special, the same way Anders’s kisses would be.)

Anyway, as they sat together on the couch, Anders leaning gingerly against Garrett's shoulder, they played Twenty Questions. "Favorite food?" Anders asked.

"Pizza," Garrett said. "But I'm smart enough to know I really shouldn't eat it all that often. I just hate being smart. You?"

"I really like french fries," Anders admitted.

"With ketchup or malt vinegar?"

"Either, both."

"Both sounds awful."

"Probably, yeah," Anders said. "Ranch dressing is good, too."

"You've definitely become Americanized."

"Maybe a little."

"Are there any foods you miss from Norway?"

"I'm pants at making lefse," he said. "It's not even difficult, it just never tastes like my mother's did. I also miss making a proper Julekakken."

"A what?"

"Christmas cake," Anders said. "You know, with dates and whatnot. I know you were born here, but are there any England-specific foods you don't get very often?"

"There are a lot of restaurants that don't have malt vinegar to go with their fries," Garrett said. "Plus, if you make fruitcake correctly, it's quite good, actually."

"You mean, soaked in booze."

"As I said."

Anders grinned. "So, are you actually a baseball fan?"

"I like most sports," Garrett said, "but no, we're a football family. The European kind, obviously. We usually follow women's since the US men's teams all suck right now."

"Ahh," Anders said. "I played some football in high school, a hundred years ago."

"I did, too. Even some intramural in college. Not much these days, though." 

"What do you currently do to stay active?"

"Walk my hundred-and-fifty-pound dog?" Garrett said.

"I should think you do more than that," Anders said primly.

Garrett grinned and flexed the arm that Anders was leaning against. "Yeah, I lift once or twice a week and Fenris makes me go for a run with him when he thinks about it, but nothing organized. I'm afraid it's mostly lucky genetics."

"Your whole family is luckier with genetics than they should be," Anders grumbled.

"You haven't met the younger twins yet, have you?"

"I haven't, but one of them is in med school and the other, I'm given to understand, looks rather like you, so what do I not know?"

"Nothing; I was just trying to figure out what you already did know."

They fell silent a moment, leaning together; Garrett could smell Anders's shampoo and he liked it, whatever it was. "Who was your most recent ex?" he asked lazily.

Anders stiffened and pulled away, looking at Garrett a little suspiciously. "Would you know that about anyone else you were dating?"

"Probably," Garrett said. "Why? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." He wasn't sure if Anders didn't want to share the information or just wasn't interested in hearing the same information about Garrett himself.

"It's . . . complicated," Anders said after a moment. "It's--his name was Karl, but--well, the very short version is that he had a brain tumor and his family wouldn't let me in to see him in the hospital, even though I'd cared for him up to that point."

"Oh, Maker," Garrett said faintly. "I'm so sorry." He reached over and placed a hand on Anders's shoulder, squeezing gently. "When was that?"

"Five years ago," Anders said. “And that’s--the long version of the story explains why I’m on the outs with the Healers’ Guild. Suffice it to say they have very different ideas about end-of-life care than I do. Did.”

"Oh, Anders. Hug?"

"That would be nice."

Garrett held his arms out and Anders folded himself into them, his face pressed into Garrett's shoulder. This--this was a horrible way to get it, but holding Anders like this, well.

It was nice.

It was more than nice.

He really shouldn't feel like this, Garrett reminded himself. Anders was his fiance because he needed the protection of being married to a US citizen, and also the fact that Garrett was the son of a powerful family didn't hurt. Seducing him--anything that wasn't initiated by Anders himself--was a little hinky on the consent front.

He supposed that didn't mean that he couldn't lust after the man, but still. It had been two days and he had gone from "who's that?" to "when can I kiss him again?" in that time.

In the space of his own head, he could, he supposed, admit that there was more than a slight chance that he was overly fond of his own fiance.

***

Fenris went to The Hanged Man for dinner, something that he probably did too frequently for his peace of mind, but he'd spent all afternoon kicking and punching things and he needed to replace those calories expeditiously. The bar did a fairly decent steak and veggies, defying expectations.

It was surprisingly busy, even at the odd in-between hour of seven. The after-work crowd was still going strong and the evening drinkers were starting to stagger in. Fenris snagged a stool at the bar and waited until Isabela had time for him.

"Well, hello, there, gorgeous," Bela said when she did make it to his end of the bar. She leaned onto her forearms, framing her chest admirably. "What can I get you?"

"The steak plate," he said, ignoring her . . . charms.

"Ah, the usual. And the usual to drink?"

"If you would, please."

"Anything for you, sugar."

Marian came in while he was gingerly sipping at his first and only glass of wine. He also had a glass of water, but she gave him a second glass as she passed by, without even saying a word.

He watched as she went and found Merrill, running between the kitchen and her booths, and pulled her aside for just a moment. Marian brushed her hand over the nape of Merrill's neck, and Fenris saw the sickly orange magic flare for half a second as Marian's blue magic eradicated it.

Although he didn't necessarily think it would solve Merrill's stalker problem, he did breathe a sigh of relief when the tag disappeared and nothing else seemed to happen. Not for the first time he wondered how strong Marian's magic was and what, exactly, she could do, should she set her mind to it.

He stayed well past finishing his own meal, past when Marian took over the bar and demoted Bela to her assistant. She kept both of his glasses of water full and saved his seat when the inevitable results manifested. The bar cleared out a little around nine-thirty, and Marian leaned against the bar, a couple seats away from him, and said, "Whew."

"Merrill appears all right," he said cautiously.

"Yeah, I took care of it," she said. "You need a refill?"

"Not just yet," he said. One of his glasses was still full.

The door to the bar opened, not an unusual event, but Fenris had the strangest feeling that he'd all of a sudden been transported into an old western. Two people walked in, a short blond man with skin only a shade or two lighter than Fenris's own, and a redheaded woman with sharp cheekbones not unlike Merrill's. He had the gold lines around his eyes that meant that he could See, although not much of anything else, and the woman had some green and some red, nothing indicating a strong talent in any one field.

Talented folk showed up at The Hanged Man quite frequently, so why did Fenris feel as if they were different? He nearly expected an Ennio Morricone score to start playing, and he only kept himself from whistling the opening bit by force of will.

The blond man made a show of looking around before his gaze settled on Marian at the bar, who had straightened up. He made an expansive gesture upon seeing her and came up to the bar. "You must be the fair Maid Marian, who runs the bar as ruthlessly and efficiently as she breaks hearts. We have heard so much about you."

Fenris suddenly wished for popcorn. The blond man had a lot of charisma; it was evident from his short speech. He also had quite a thick accent, Latinx of some flavor, but Fenris suspected it was at least half put on. He was more than decently attractive, Fenris could admit, but calling Marian "Maid Marian" never went over well, and Fenris was looking forward to watching her eviscerate him.

"Nope, no maidens here," Marian said, after looking around. "You see any maidens, Fen?"

"I do not," he said gravely.

"See any broken hearts?" she asked, still with false cheer.

"None of which I am aware," he said.

"You must be in the wrong place, then," she said to the two.

"And you have just as clearly convinced me that I am not," the man said. "Only the owner of a bar would be so unconcerned with driving away customers."

Marian? Owner of The Hanged Man?

Marian rolled her eyes. "I don't own shit," she said. "D'you want a drink, some pub fries, or are you just here to annoy me?"

"I would never come to a bar to annoy you. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Zevran Arainai, and this is my lovely lady Lyna Mahariel." He actually bowed as he introduced himself.

Fenris had heard the name Zevran before, although he wasn't entirely sure in what context.

"Cool," Marian said. "And what are you drinking?"

"I would not say no to a pale ale of some sort."

Marian sloshed some of the Brooklyn Brewery's IPA into a glass and set it on the counter. "And you?" she said to Lyna. "Your taste in partners is suspect but so far I don't think I'm going to kick you out."

"I can't control him," Lyna said, shrugging. "Wheat beer?"

Marian gave her a choice and she picked Fen's favorite of the two, not that it mattered. Dispensing it a little more neatly, Marian set it on the bar and said, "Can I get you anything else, Lyna?"

"Well," Lyna said, "we're actually here to see Isabela, if she's around."

"She's not," Marian said without a moment's hesitation. "I can take a message if you'd like to leave one."

Bela. That was the context. Wasn't Zevran--she called him Zev, Fenris was fairly certain--her ex? What was he doing coming around with what was undoubtedly his current girlfriend? Although Fenris didn't find Lyna nearly as annoying as Zevran was, it still wasn't done.

Also, Bela _was_ here. She was currently in the kitchen. Fenris unobtrusively grabbed his phone to see if he still had Bela's number in there. He did, so he sent her a quick text. _Zev & Lyna are here, asking for you. Marian said you're not here._

 _I saw. I'll continue not being here,_ came back a few seconds later, and Fenris locked his phone and put it away.

Lyna was scribbling something on a piece of receipt paper while Zevran was trying to wheedle more information out of an increasingly irate Marian, and Fenris just listened.

"No, of course, I don't know why she isn't here on a night that you think she should be here. Most likely your information is incorrect. You're under the impression that I own this bar." She waved a hand around. "Do I look like the kind of person who would own a bar?"

Now Fenris was convinced that she _did_ own the bar. It would make sense; Fenris knew enough about Garrett's finances to be able to make some guesses about hers. But she rarely lied outright when a half-truth would suffice, so perhaps she didn't own it outright or something. 

(Why hadn't Garrett ever told him that his sister owned the bar? Fenris was fairly sure that the entire group was under the impression that she was the bar manager, but certainly an owner would spend more time there, wouldn't she?)

"Ahh, but my Isabela is a trickster, you know? Perhaps she _is_ here, but neither of us can see her."

That was, in fact, possible. Isabela had some magical talents, purple and blue lines, that would likely allow her to disguise herself, but she would always be visible to Fenris.

"Your Isabela?" Marian's voice dripped with poison. "Isabela's her own damn person."

"Zev," Lyna said. "Knock it off." She chugged the rest of her beer and said, "Let's go."

"Ahh, well, if you ask it of me," Zevran said. He gave an extravagant bow, polished off his own beer, and left with Lyna.

"Well, now," Varric said, coming out of his usual booth and joining them at the bar. "What just happened there?"

"You would think by now that people would stop attempting to annoy me into saying the wrong thing," Marian said. "But no one seems to learn."

"Well, I know better than to try," Varric said.

"What was that about you owning the bar?" Fenris said.

Marian put her head in her hands. "I don't own the fucking bar. I am a part owner, along with Varric and about eight other people." She sighed. "I'm supposed to be a _silent_ part owner, but whatever."

Fenris nodded. He could respect her desire for anonymity.

"Who was that guy, even?" Varric asked.

"You've never heard Bela mention Zev?" Marian asked.

"In fact, I have not," Varric said. He leaned forward on his forearms and flashed a devilish smile. "Do tell."

"He's my ex," Bela said, striding in from the kitchen.

"He left this for you," Marian said, holding up the slip of paper. 

Bela took it and glanced at it. "No, he didn't. Lyna did."

"Yeah, uh, what's going on there?" Varric said.

"Ugh, it's all so declasse," she said, dropping the slip of paper into Fenris's glass of water and then collecting it, along with both Zevran and Lyna's glasses, in the bus tub and bringing it back to the kitchen.

"No, wait! I really want to know what's going on!" Varric called after her, but she just flipped him off.

The doors opened again, letting in a dozen or so people, all laughing, and Marian got back to work. Varric went back to his booth with a sigh, and Isabela returned in a few moments to do her actual job.

Fenris had only caught one word on the note, but it had been "love," and not as part of the closing. Interesting.

***

Anders somehow found himself spending the rest of the day with Garrett, even after the awkward emotional revelation of the Karl situation. He'd eventually told Garrett about a little bit of the bad parts--not the worst, not the end, but some of the fights he'd had with Karl's parents and the situation with the London head of the Healers’ Guild--and it had gone . . . well. Of course, in two days, he hadn't experienced anything with Garrett that would have led him to believe that there was much of anything he could say that would go poorly. He'd insulted the man's best friend, for the Maker's sake, and that hadn't put Garrett off. He'd still tried to make _Anders_ feel better.

Garrett cooked again for dinner, and then they talked some more, although not about anything too serious. Anders did learn about a few of Garrett's important exes, including Bela (Anders knew Marian had slept with Bela as well, and that had to be weird). Afterward, and after they took Barkspawn for another walk, they ended up back on the couch. 

Platonically, that was. Or, well, not sexually. They were cuddling again, sort of, Garrett's head in Anders's lap. "I kinda do this a lot," Garrett said, a little apologetic.

"It's nice," Anders said, sifting strands of Garrett's hair through his fingers. He was enjoying it, Garrett was obviously enjoying it, what was the harm? "What do you usually do in the evenings?"

"Stay in with the dog, watch a movie, read, hang out with family or Fen," he said. "If I go out, it's usually to Marian's bar. I'm not really sure how we managed to miss each other there for so long."

"I didn't usually go to socialize," Anders said, and he wasn't really sure why he felt like apologizing for that.

"Nah, you want to be around people but you don't want to talk to them, that makes sense," Garrett said.

"Your accent is slipping," Anders said.

"Which direction?"

"You sound like your sister," which was to say, completely Americanized and unlike their father. He wondered what Garrett sounded like when he wasn't trying.

"Yours is too," Garrett said. "Your vowels are shifting around and your Rs are doing weird things. I like it."

Garrett had to be getting sleepy. No one in his right mind would ever consider Anders's natural accent in English to be something to be appreciated. It wasn't even one of the sexier Scandinavian accents. He sounded like he was from a hick town in the middle of a snowbank, which, as a matter of fact, he was. "Thank you, I suppose."

"D'you want to watch something? I have, uh. Netflix. Amazon Prime. The usual."

Anders didn't even own a TV and his apartment's internet was normally slow due to one of his roommates being a Twitch streamer and stealing all of the bandwidth all evening, every evening. "Pick something," he said.

Garrett picked the Disney _Robin Hood_ , which it turned out he owned, along with what looked like the rest of Disney and Pixar's catalogues.

Anders wasn't going to complain. He settled in, gave Garrett's jaw a scritch--he knew what people with beards liked, and Garrett's groan of appreciation said he was no exception--and watched the movie.

And tried not to think about how hard he was falling for his fiance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday!
> 
> Everything I know about Norwegian food I know from second-generation Norwegian immigrants in the US. Actual Norwegians, my apologies.
> 
> Also I will never apologize for actually liking homemade fruitcake.
> 
> Lyna Mahariel is the female Dalish elf default name from DA:O. She wasn't the Hero of Ferelden (see a previous chapter that mentioned Solona Amell, human noble default name, as "practically a princess") in this 'verse, partly because Ferelden doesn't exist. :)


	5. ~in which Fenris fixes things, Marian fixes things, and Garrett and Anders break them~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As usual, no one can run their life without a Hawke helping. Except Fenris, because the Hawkes (both of them) are causing all the complications in his life. Anders moves in with Garrett, and then he gets to meet the rest of family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings [here](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/180593154843/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-5), although I couldn't think of any for this chapter.

Fenris managed to get through Sunday without actually talking to Garrett. He did, however, text Marian in the middle of the afternoon. _Does Merrill know any self-defense?_

_if u try to teach her muay thai or capybara or whatever it is u do she might die_

_Capoeira._

_wev close enough_

_It is not. I practice Brazilian jiu jitsu, which is neither of the arts you mentioned._

_omg whatever fen just don't try to get her to shove a hand through someone's chest she'll die_

_But has she studied any self-defense?_

_idk about physical stuff but she can do some *~magic~* shit that prolly qualifies_

Maker help him, he was starting to see Marian's idiosyncratic texting as borderline charming. What was wrong with him? _If I offer to teach her a few things in physical self-defense, do you think she'd take that well?_

_uhhhhhhhhhhh idk rly want me 2 talk 2 her?_

Did he? _Let me consider the matter. I'll get back to you shortly._

_kk_

Monday he got a text from Garrett, asking to meet with him for lunch, and Fenris couldn't particularly think of a good reason not to, troublesome new fiance or no. They met in the employee cafeteria on the sixth floor of Garrett's building and stared at each other for a couple moments before Garrett gave a nervous laugh. "Look, uh, Fenris, I'm not going to apologize on Anders's behalf, but . . . I'm sorry for my part in it."

"What part exactly?" Fenris said, but he kept his tone as neutral as he could. "It certainly isn't your fault that your fiance agrees with you on a subject you and I try not to discuss."

"Oh, Maker, you're pissed," Garrett said.

Apparently Fenris hadn’t done that good a job of moderating his tone.

"Look, I--” Garrett sighed. “What can I tell him?"

Fenris shrugged. "If you feel there's something he needs to know in order to be civil, then you may tell him."

"It's not about civility, it's--I'm marrying him and that's not going to change. You're my best friend, my not-blood brother, my _family._ I don't necessarily need you to be his best friend, but I don't want to lose you over this."

"You won't," Fenris said.

"Then why do I feel like I already have?"

"You haven't," Fenris said, allowing a little more emotion to come into his voice. He would _not_ lose Garrett Hawke. Significant others could come and go, but Garrett had taken one look at him, back in college, and declared that they were best friends. Fenris hadn't known what to do with that declaration--it seemed more suited to an elementary-school-age meeting than an eighteen-year-old and a probably-twenty-year-old at a prestigious Eastern university, and Garrett was an alchemist, after all. It had taken a few weeks for it to sink in, but once it did . . . "You won't."

Garrett smiled, a little sad. "That's really nice for you to say, but what are we going to do to make sure that it happens?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Can I tell him a little more about you? Nothing . . . specific, if you don't want it. He already knows that you, ah, have some poorly healed broken bones."

Fenris nodded. "As I said, whatever you feel you need to tell him. I trust you."

"And then would you be willing to meet with him--with both of us--again?"

"Yes, I would." He really wasn't sure what Garrett wanted to accomplish with this, but he'd be willing to meet with them.

"Good. I--Fenris, you know I--"

"Yes, I'm aware."

Garrett blew out a breath. "Good."

"May I eat my lunch now?"

Garrett leaned over, stole a baby carrot, and popped it in his mouth. "Now you can."

***

Anders had conveniently forgotten that he worked the weekend that he was supposed to be moving into Garrett's condo, but given that he was working overnights and also how little he had to move, he thought he could still make it work. He really thought it would be fine; he had Tuesday and Wednesday off, and he got everything other than what he used every day into bags. He did see Garrett for dinner on Wednesday, but other than that, it was mostly just text messages between them. Neither of them brought Fenris up, and Anders was fine with that.

But when Garrett and Marian arrived at noon on Saturday, after Anders had had about three hours of sleep, he couldn't quite remember why he thought it was a good idea.

Marian had brought coffee. "Is there a reason I'm not marrying you instead?" Anders said, taking the cup gratefully.

"I love you, Anders, but you're not quite my type," she said, laughing.

Anders had a moment of panic when he realized he'd said that in front of Garrett, but no, Garrett was laughing, too.

The total moving took a couple hours; Garrett had borrowed the Hawke parents' SUV. It took two trips, but only because bags of clothing took up more space than Anders had anticipated.

When they were done, Marian took the SUV--complete with Anders's mattress still tied to the top, because he wasn't going to need it in the near future--back to their parents' house. That left Anders staring at Garrett a little blankly.

"Do you need more coffee?" Garrett said. "I can make some."

"That might work," Anders said. He accepted a cup when Garrett came out with it a few minutes later and inhaled the scent appreciatively. "Wow, that's strong."

"Yeah, I figured you wanted the good stuff. All your bags of clothing are in the spare bedroom at the moment. You can go through them as you have time and put them in the dresser and the closet. The kitchen stuff is in the kitchen, although I have mostly the same stuff."

"Yes, well," Anders said, feeling a little testy. "I never really got around to buying the good stuff, because I didn't have much of a kitchen to use them in."

"I meant literally the same," Garrett said gently. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with an Anchor glass one-cup measuring cup. "See? I didn't even spring for the Pyrex."

"Oh." Anders felt tears spring to his eyes, which was absurd. He was really tired. "I think I'm going to lie down for a bit." He stood and slugged down the rest of his coffee, which was probably a little bit too hot to do that, but then hesitated. One thing they'd managed to fail to discuss was where he was going to sleep. How did they in fact manage to forget that? Had they actually _forgotten_ , or just avoided it?

"Take the master," Garrett said, guiding him gently by his shoulders towards Garrett's own bedroom. "The sheets are clean."

Anders hadn't actually been in Garrett's bedroom before; somehow he'd avoided that as well. But the bed was a king; Anders supposed he should have expected that, given how big Garrett was by himself, let alone trying to share the bed with a partner.

Or, as the case may be, Barkspawn. "Hey, down, you mutt," Garrett said, and Barkspawn emitted a sad boof before jumping down to the floor and ensconcing himself in a frankly enormous dog bed in the corner.

The room was big enough to fit a king-sized bed and have room for a dresser and a chair in the corner. The walls were a cream color, the trim dark wood; the bed had a red-and-gold bedspread that Garrett was pulling back on one side. "In you go," he said, and Anders realized he'd apparently been just standing in the middle of the floor. "Oh, I suppose you might want to take off your jeans. I'll step out if you want, but you seem a little out of it."

Anders had already been unbuckling his belt, but he stopped. And then realised how little he cared. "Oh, no, you'll see my boxers," he said with a yawn in the middle.

Garrett chuckled. "I'm glad you feel that way."

Anders finally stumbled out of his jeans and they magically disappeared as he toppled over onto the soft mattress.

"Should I wake you at any particular time?"

"I have to be at work at seven," Anders said, or thought he said, but apparently Garrett understood him because the next thing he knew, Garrett was shaking his shoulder gently and the clock said it was six pm.

He felt like he'd slept about ten minutes, maybe fifteen; the coffee earlier had no effect, apparently, despite its purported strength. "Ugh."

"Food?" Garrett asked. "I've made waffles."

Waffles?

"I'm quite fond of breakfast for dinner, and now you've given me more excuses," he continued.

"Waffles, yes," Anders said. He yawned and stood, stretching. "Give me ten minutes."

"No problem. They're in the oven, keeping warm."

Anders had pulled his shirt over his head and was in the bathroom before he abruptly realized that he hadn't--"Can I use your bathroom?"

"It's your bathroom, too," Garrett said. He wasn't laughing, which Anders had expected; he was leaning against the doorway and watching Anders.

"Ah, yeah," Anders said. He looked over at Garrett again and it occurred to him that Garrett wasn't watching him generally, he was . . . _looking_ at him. Shirtless. "I, um, I'll be out in a couple minutes." He ducked into the bathroom and closed the door behind him as quickly as he could.

A five-minute shower later, he found a clean set of scrubs, donned them, and went out to find the promised breakfast. He did find breakfast, nicely plated with a pouf of whipped cream on one side and strawberry jam in a pool on the other side. "This is nice."

"It's apology waffles," Garrett said, and he did look quite apologetic. "I don't mean to make you uncomfortable. I shouldn't have stared at you. I'll keep my eyes to myself, I promise."

It took Anders a moment to parse Garrett's words and then to find any meaning in them that was relevant to what had happened since he woke up. "Oh, um, it's not really a problem," he said, taking a bite of his waffles. They were perfect, crispy on the outside and warm on the inside, and the whipped cream was perfectly sweet and fluffy. Even if he didn't quite understand why Garrett was apologizing, he was ready to accept it just for the waffles.

"It is to me," Garrett said, and now he sounded earnest. "I don't want you to feel coerced."

Coerced? He wasn't feeling coerced. "Well, I mean, if you need to look at me to sell the engagement . . ." He trailed off as Garrett shook his head.

"But not here I don't. Do you want more coffee, or have you had enough today?"

"I wouldn't say no to another cup," Anders said, "but I'm going to have to take it with me."

"Oh, here," Garrett said, and he opened a cupboard to reveal a shelf full of travel mugs. "Cream or sugar or anything?"

"No, plain black is fine," Anders said and took the cup when it was handed to him. "Thank you. This is more than enough."

"It's just breakfast," Garrett said. "Have a good . . . night? At work."

"From your lips to the Maker's ears," Anders said. Hopefully he could make it through his shift without falling over.

He clutched the travel mug as he walked to the subway stop and wondered why he was feeling so emotional about waffles, of all things. It would all make sense when the coffee kicked in. Probably.

***

Varric caught Marian as she went into work Saturday evening. "Hey, uh, I may need to transfer my ownership of the bar to you temporarily."

"Temporarily?"

"Yeah, you know, for maybe a couple of years."

"That's not very temporary."

"Well, I mean, it's not forever."

"It sounds like you're going to jail."

"I'm not going to jail," Varric said. "At least, I don't think I am. Something weird could happen, but I haven't actually done anything that would mean I'd go to jail."

"So . . ." Marian raised her eyebrows at him. "Why do you want to sign over your share of the bar to me?"

Varric sighed. "Bartrand."

"Ah."

"You sound so surprised."

"So very surprised," she said. "Do you want me to buy the share from you?"

"No, Maker, no, don't do that. Then I'd just have more money for Bartrand to try to take." He winced. "Can we forget I said that?"

"Oh, Varric, you know I can't." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She always found that he’d picked up the use of “Maker” from her rather charming, since he clearly hadn’t been raised in a magical family. "I'll get my dad to draw up some papers to transfer your portion of the company to me, but in two years exactly I'll transfer it back to you, see if I don't."

"Well," Varric said, "unless I _am_ in jail at that point."

"Make sure you aren't. What are we going to do without you there to hold down that booth?" She grinned, and he grinned back.

"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes when I come here, the Spook's sitting in my spot, but he's usually gone before too long. What's his deal, do you know?"

She shrugged. "I don't think I know any more than you do." That was a lie. Anders had told her that the Spook had some sort of giant stab wound that had been healed--or, well, Healed--in his chest, and once he'd come in with a redheaded woman who looked like she was made of pure magic, but none of that was anything that she really felt the need to tell Varric. At least, not until the next time she was drunk and had to get things off of her chest.

"Guess I'll just have to make something up, then." He stood up on his tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek. "Thanks, Champ."

"You're welcome, Varric."

Bela caught her before she'd managed to do anything more than shove her purse into the back room. "Hey, so, uh, Marian. Can I crash at your place tonight?"

"Sure," Marian said. "Why?"

Isabela closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose, not quite a sniff or a sigh but something in that family. "Because this morning, Zev and Lyna stopped by, and . . . I just don't want to be there if they try again."

"Maker," Marian said. "Did you call the police?"

"I didn't. I just pretended I wasn't home. Norah was already at work, so it turned out fine, but I told her what was going on."

"I'm still not sure you shouldn't tell the police, but yeah, of course you can stay with me."

Bela shrugged. "It's not criminal," she said. "Just annoying."

"Well, you can always change your mind," Marian said. "You work till close, right?"

"I do."

"If you want to go home before I get done, I'll give you my key."

"I'll just stick around and wait for you," Isabela said.

"Look, if they come in again, do you want me to throw them out? You know I can and I will."

"And you'd enjoy it, too," Isabela said. "No, I just . . . want them to disappear. You know?"

"Yeah," Marian said. "Yeah, I really do."

She got herself settled behind the bar and was about to do, you know, actual _work_ when Merrill came up to her and said, "Marian! Your friend Fenris offered me self-defense lessons. What do I say?"

Could _no one_ run their lives without her help today? "What do you want to say, Daisy?"

"I don't know! That's why I'm asking you!"

Marian pinched the bridge of her nose. "Do you want to learn self-defense?"

"I don't think it would be a terrible idea," Merrill said.

"Are you comfortable learning from Fenris?"

"I don't know. He's quite intimidating, you know?"

Marian had never really thought so, but she towered over him by three or four inches and probably outweighed him by twenty pounds, two things that Merrill could not say. She'd seen him kick people in the face and it was cool, but she wasn't sure she would have called it "intimidating." "Would you feel more comfortable if Garrett or I or Bela or someone was also there?"

"Oh! Yes, I think I would. Do you think we could make that happen?"

"Sure," Marian said, a little recklessly. She could make it happen, but it just might not happen for a couple weeks. "Let me talk to Fenris later and we'll try to work something out." Fenris, of all people, wouldn't be insulted if Merrill wanted someone else in the room.

"Thank you so much!" Merrill hugged Marian; even in the short heels she wore for serving, really more platforms, she barely came past Marian's shoulder. Marian hugged her back.

"Let's get back to work."

"Oh! Yes, of course." Merrill scurried off.

Marian finally started checking on the bar supplies and was slicing another goddamn lemon--seriously, did none of the other bartenders ever cut lemons?--when Fenris slid onto a bar stool. She put down her knife and sighed. "What do you need?"

Fenris looked mildly confused. "Need? Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"I'll take a glass of water, if you're offering."

Marian poured him a glass of water and set it in front of him. "Seriously? That's it?"

"I've offered your friend Merrill self-defense lessons, but she hasn't gotten back to me quite yet."

"I took care of that already," she said. "I offered to be at the lessons with her. She's intimidated by you."

Fenris nodded. "That seems fair. We'll work out a time later."

"That's what I told Merrill. Are you coming tomorrow?"

"What's tomorrow?"

"It's the fourth Sunday."

"Ah, yes," Fenris said. "Would it still be appropriate?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

He raised and dropped one shoulder. "No reason, I suppose."

"Yeah, well," Marian said. "I'm going to do my actual job."

"I'm not stopping you."

She stuck her tongue out at him and went back to dismembering her lemon.

***

Garrett was awake when Anders got home, on purpose; while he'd gone to bed at a perfectly reasonable hour last night, he'd set his alarm for just after seven. Anders staggered in a couple minutes after eight-thirty. "I forgot where I was going," he said when he saw Garrett sitting on the couch. "Ended up at my old place and was about to go up the stairs when I remembered."

"I'm not all that surprised," Garrett said. "Do you need more food? Another shower?"

"Sleep," Anders said. He rubbed his face. "I had a sandwich in the middle of my shift. I should be all right on food until I wake up."

"When are you going to wake up?"

"Sometime next week, if I'm lucky." Anders pulled out his ponytail and shook his head. "I don't know, three? Why?"

"There's a dinner tonight at my parents'," Garrett said. "It's the fourth Sunday. We always eat together at their place on the fourth Sunday. And, well, you probably need to meet the rest of my family."

"Oh," Anders said. "Well. What time do we need to leave to get there?"

"Four or four-thirty," Garrett said, smiling. "Waking up at three should be fine. Have a good sleep, Anders."

"I will." He leaned over the side of the couch and kissed Garrett on the cheek--unexpected to Garrett, who felt his face flush. "Good night, or, rather, good morning."

Garrett watched Anders go into the bedroom and shut the door. It wasn't lascivious watching, he reasoned, and Anders had just kissed him on the cheek, so . . .

He puttered around the house quietly all day, leaving to get groceries and run a couple other errands just before lunch. After lunch, which was leftover waffles because he really wasn't that much of an adult, he took Barkspawn for a walk. The weather was nice enough that he went out for a run, sneaking into the bedroom to grab his running shoes and then changing in the spare bedroom. Anders was curled up into a tight ball on the half of the bed he'd taken, blankets secured under his chin. Garrett was fairly certain that Anders wasn't actually cold, given that it was a perfectly normal temperature and there were multiple blankets on the bed, but he would ask later.

When he got back from his post-lunch run, he debated taking a shower. It was only a few minutes before three. He'd let Anders have his last few minutes of sleep. He was awfully warm, though, so he pulled off his shirt and stuck his head under the kitchen faucet.

A very odd gurgle came from behind him, and Garrett rubbed the water from his face and turned around to see what Barkspawn was getting into.

It was not Barkspawn. It was Anders, newly awake, wearing actual pajama pants and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up every which way. "I, uh. Hi."

"Hi," Garrett said and grabbed his shirt off the counter. "Okay if I use the shower?"

"I mean, be my guest, it's your shower," Anders said. "You're also welcome to walk around shirtless in tiny running shorts with water dripping down your chest, if that's what you'd like to do."

"You said that out loud," Garrett said.

"I really did," Anders said and brought both of his hands up to rub his face. "Go. Shower. I'll put my brain back together."

"Coffee's in the cupboard over the coffee maker," Garrett said as he walked out of the room.

Anders had definitely been checking him out, right? Right? He had to admit, shirtless with water running down him was not his worst look. It wasn't the worst look for any man, really. He hadn't been showing off on purpose, but it didn't exactly hurt.

Oh well. He shouldn't necessarily put any stock in Anders's reaction.

He showered quickly and dressed in a shirt and jeans. The family typically didn't dress up for Sunday dinner, but that didn't mean he didn't pick his better pair of jeans and a nicer shirt than he might normally have worn on the weekend. When he went back to the living room, Anders was sitting on the couch, his legs under a throw blanket. "Are you cold?" Garrett asked.

"Usually, yeah," Anders said. "Also, I like blankets."

"You were curled up into a tiny ball in bed," Garrett said.

"I wasn't so cold that I couldn't sleep," Anders said, a little apologetic.

"It's fine. I think I have an electric blanket somewhere." _You could sleep with me_ was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew better than to say it. Even if it was true; Garrett was a furnace.

"That might be helpful," Anders said. He pulled up his feet and patted the couch, and Garrett sat. "So we haven't exactly addressed the issue of where I'm to sleep when I'm not working nights."

"Ah, that," Garrett said. "There is a bed in the spare bedroom, but mostly Barkspawn uses it when I let him. I'm happy to clean all the covers if you'd prefer to sleep in there, but--"

"--if we get audited or whatever it's called, it's not going to look good if I'm sleeping in a different bedroom from you. Even if couples don't share beds all the time. What if you snore like a chainsaw?"

"I don't," Garrett said. "I don't think I do, anyway." No one had ever mentioned it before. "Anyway, it's a king-sized bed and I'm big, but I'm not that big." _And I should be able to keep my hands to myself,_ he added, but only in his own head.

"We'll try it," Anders said, and that was apparently that. He pushed off the blankets and stood, stretching his arms over his head. "I suppose it's my turn to shower. We need to leave in an hour?"

"Yeah. It's about an hour to my parents' from here."

"Where do they live?"

"Scarsdale," Garrett said.

Anders did a double take and then shook his head. "I don't know what I expected."

"Well, Michael Bluth, you're marrying into it." Garrett sobered and said, "Yeah. My family has money. I'm not apologizing for it, because it's getting us out of a tight spot here. But we try really hard not to be assholes."

"Yeah, I know," Anders said. "I'm sorry. It's just quite different from what I grew up with, and perhaps not what I'd expected when the only Hawke I knew was Marian."

"Marian resists functional adulthood with every ounce of her soul, but she actually cooks more than I do."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Go shower." He reached out and pushed Anders--a hand on his lower back, thanks--gently in the direction of the bathroom. "You stink."

"I do not!" Anders protested, but he went, laughing.

It was an hour of subway riding to get to Scarsdale but only about a five-minute walk from the Metro-North terminal to his parents' house. Garrett watched Anders, not particularly covertly, and tried to see the familiar neighborhood with his eyes. The street they were on was not that busy; the cars would actually stop to let you cross, unlike city traffic. There were a few cabs, but mostly it was private cars, hybrids and SUVs, mostly luxury brands. There was a park just a few houses down from where his parents lived--where he'd grown up--and maybe on the way home he'd be able to tell Anders heartwarming childhood stories, but at the moment, he thought it was better to be quiet.

The actual Hawke homestead, or whatever pretentious bullshit you wanted to call it, was a white Tudor . . . mansion, he supposed. It was a six-bedroom house, which was one bedroom per human (or couple) plus a spare, so Garrett had never really thought of it as massive until he went to college and squashed himself and another boy into a room the size of the spare bedroom for four years. The yard was massive by city standards but small to moderate by Scarsdale standards, with a neatly trimmed hedge and well-curated rosebushes, mostly in the English style.

(Much to his mother's dismay, Garrett preferred double roses and had bought her a double rosebush for her birthday one year when he was young. She'd planted it in the back corner, claiming the soil was better for that type of rose back there, but he'd later figured out that Leandra had Opinions and his nice Mr. Lincoln rosebush had not conformed to them. Oh well.)

There were no toys strewn over the front walk, given that no children lived at the house, but Garrett's mind supplied them: his toy cars, Marian's extensive plastic sword collection, Bethany's Legos, Carver's Lincoln logs, none of which was supposed to be outside but all of which eventually made it there. His mother had been not-so-subtly hinting about grandchildren since Garrett had finished undergrad, and she'd probably make adoption references tonight, but he could deal with that.

"You doing okay?" Garrett asked Anders before they turned to walk up the front walk, and Anders nodded.

"It's a very nice house."

"It was a delightful place to grow up," Garrett said. "And now that you know I'm a rich spoiled brat, let's go meet my mother and my other two siblings."

"I can't wait," Anders said.

They got to the door and Garrett's finger was over the doorbell when the door was wrenched open. Malcolm Hawke stood there, thunderclouds on his face. "Garrett. Anders. Come inside. There's . . . a situation."

Shit, Garrett thought. So much for their nice family dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sad boof*
> 
> All of the buildings in this story exist in New York City (or Scarsdale). They just may not be exactly where I had to place them for purposes of the story. Yes, I'm aware that the most unrealistic thing in the entire fic is four adults without roommates in NYC, including the magic and the whole immigration storyline. *shrug* Sorry?
> 
> This is about where feels-like-fire started hollering, WHO IS THE SPOOK? I don't know; I thought it was pretty obvious, myself.


	6. ~in which there is a (metaphorical) explosion~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A happy family dinner has some tense undertones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [See Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/180831070348/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-6) for chapter-specific warning.

"A situation?" Anders asked. He could feel all the blood draining from his face--well, no, he couldn't, because that wasn't quite how it worked, but still.

"Come."

Anders and Garrett followed Garrett's dad down a short hallway and into a side room with glass doors, clearly one that was used as a home office of sorts. "Have a seat," Malcolm said, and they did. "I had a letter delivered to my house today."

"But it's Sunday," Garrett said.

"It was delivered by a private courier," Malcolm said, "and it's not a legal document, just a letter." He held it out to Anders. "Do read it."

Anders skimmed over the letter--he was too rattled just by Malcolm Hawke's tone to read it very deeply, but he got the gist. "I'm not a felon," he said when he was done and handed the letter to Garrett.

Garrett took it between two fingers. "Are you sure you want me to read this?"

"Yes," Anders said without hesitation. He and Malcolm remained silent while Garrett did so, and when he was done, Anders repeated, "I'm not a felon."

"Well, no," Garrett said slowly, "you have to be tried as an adult to be a felon. Even I know that."

"Except you were seventeen," Malcolm said, "and in the US you most likely _would_ have been tried as an adult and sentenced to prison."

"What actually happened?" Garrett said.

"I blew up a church," Anders said.

"I got that much. What was the punishment?"

"Five hundred hours of community service, which was essentially a part-time job, given that I had to complete them before I was eighteen in order to be allowed to have my juvenile records sealed and not affect my college prospects," Anders said. "Which is what happened."

"Was anyone hurt?" Garrett asked.

"A couple people. Not too badly, but still. The pastor and one of the janitors. I still feel bad about it, but I planned it carefully. I'd thought they wouldn't be around then."

"You blew up a church," Garrett said. "I--why?"

"Does it matter?" Anders said, a little bleakly. Well. There it went. He'd lost all possibility of anything with Garrett. A white, loveless, friendless marriage it was, if they were even still to marry.

"You can discuss it later," Malcolm said. "So you can see that Em Ess got your juvenile records unsealed and she is going to try to use them to get your immigration status revoked and, possibly, your medical license pulled as well."

"Can we do anything about this?" Garrett asked.

Well, it was nice that he seemed to want to continue this farce at least a little longer.

"I don't know yet," Malcolm said. "The letter came about a half hour before you got here."

"Which suggests your schedule is not unknown," Anders said.

"We've invited enough people to fourth-Sunday dinner over the years that I wouldn't be surprised if half the magical community knows about it," Garrett said.

Malcolm nodded. "I didn't tell anyone else about this, but they know I got a letter. I'll deflect. If anyone asks, you were in here to discuss something about the pre-nup. No one will question that."

"That's a lie. Carver will."

"I'll keep your brother under control," Malcolm said.

Anders was almost, but not quite, looking forward to meeting Carver; he'd heard so much and almost none of it good, but he couldn't quite tell what percent of it was just inter-familial teasing and what was, well, actual aspersions against his character. Bethany he was definitely looking forward to meeting; they had a ready-made conversation topic that wasn't his upcoming marriage.

"Anyway, I think your mother has appetizers and drinks or something, so I'll leave you in here a moment."

"So we can come out playing the happy couple?" Garrett said. "It'll be fine." He bumped his elbow into Anders's, gently.

"That and so I can get to the crab cakes before you eat them all," Malcolm said, a broad grin on his face, very much like Garrett's. Anders found himself smiling back without effort. 

He left, and Anders's heart started pounding again. "I understand if you want to--"

"Stop right there," Garrett said. "I'm not going to dump you, or re-evaluate how this is happening or anything. I think I want a real conversation later on what you did and why, so I can understand, but--" He sighed. "Even if you did it for completely terrible reasons, I believe people can change. I have to, you know?"

Anders didn't know, but he nodded.

"I have to believe that, because everyone's done some shitty things. You're not the sum of your past, you're more than that."

"You're not talking about me at all here, are you," Anders said quietly. It wasn't a question.

Garrett shook his head. "No. Not me, either. But I'm not going to treat . . . certain people one way and you differently."

"I wouldn't be surprised if you did. You've known me for a week and . . . other people for a decade." They were talking about Fenris, of course. Who else would they be talking about?

"But I--look, Anders, we'll talk about this later, okay? I really do want to understand. And I want to know why you didn't just tell me--tell us about this up front." He looked so earnest that Anders felt his heart breaking.

"Okay." Anders had no real idea if he could explain it--explain what he'd done and why and all the other nuances in any way that would make sense to Garrett, or if it would be enough, but since Garrett wanted to pretend at the moment that they could get through this, he'd play along.

"Can I kiss you?"

"You still want to?" Anders asked, surprised.

"Well, yeah," Garrett said, like it was the most obvious thing ever. "But you don't have to say yes."

"I mean, maybe we should," Anders said. "Since your mother is watching us." He could see her--well, he assumed the lovely woman with silvery-gray hair was Leandra Hawke, but she could be someone else--reflected in the glass of the window behind Hawke Senior's desk.

"I hope that's just an excuse," Garrett said, smiling, as he moved closer.

"I like kissing you," Anders admitted. He didn't know how much longer he'd get to do it, so he might as well take the kisses where he could.

"That's good," Garrett breathed, "because I like kissing you, too." He punctuated the statement by pressing his lips to Anders, warm and sure.

Anders sank into the kiss, his eyes closing; one hand reached out and found Garrett's, and wow, that was much more than a _hint_ of tongue. Anders opened his mouth, and very quickly the kiss turned into something that probably wasn't appropriate at all in one's future parents-in-law's house.

Anders didn't really care. Garrett didn't seem to, either, at least until a loud rapping came on the French doors and they sprang apart. "Oops," Garrett said, sounding completely unrepentant.

The person who'd rapped on the door was not the Hawke matriarch, but clearly Carver. Shorter and slighter than Garrett, he looked a little bit like a blurred, clean-shaven copy of his older brother--not unhandsome, but still a little unfinished. He also looked pissed as hell, not a look that Anders had ever had cause to see on Garrett's face.

"Hey, asshole," Garrett said to his brother affectionately.

"Hey, yourself. Get your tongue out of your new boy's mouth and come say hi to Mother."

Oh, wow, Carver had no English accent at all. Odd.

"Cop academy trained it out of him," Garrett said in an aside, and Anders spent a moment wondering whether he'd actually said anything or if Garrett had just read his mind.

Oh well. Not worth worrying about. Not with all the other stuff going on.

***

Fenris had been to approximately a hundred fourth-Sunday dinners over the years. He’d visited the Hawke manse during a dozen or more school breaks and holidays over the years. He was nearly as comfortable there as he was in his own home. It wasn't a rule that any Hawke children weren't allowed to bring significant others; Leandra Hawke was usually thrilled when they did. In total, though, Marian had never brought anyone, Bethany only had once or twice, Carver did once, and Garrett had to perhaps six or seven dinners over the years. (Fenris never had. He'd never had a relationship that made it to any sort of meet-the-family stage.)

So he probably could forgive himself for completely forgetting that Garrett would be bringing Anders along. 

He wouldn't be able to un-see that kiss, though. Wasn't it a . . . what was the term, marriage of convenience? He supposed that didn't necessarily mean it would be a marriage in name only. He also supposed Anders was attractive, viewed in a certain light and by someone whose general attraction to men was a little less fraught.

Marian, on the other hand, was laughing. "Carver, you deserve every bit of trauma you just suffered."

"It's not even the first time you've walked in on Garrett kissing someone," Bethany added. Fenris hadn't seen her in a couple months and she looked rather tired. Given that it was a couple weeks before the end of her first year of med school, though, he wasn't surprised.

"Or worse," Malcolm said.

"Hey, we don't talk about that," Garrett protested. "Especially not my _parents._ "

"Carver walked in on him and Bela," Marian murmured to Anders, who looked a little shell-shocked.

"Your father seems rather blase about the whole situation," Anders murmured back.

"Well, yeah--wait, you're not going to ask about the Bela part?"

"To be honest, I'd assumed literally everyone had slept with Bela."

Fenris suppressed a chuckle. Anders wasn't wrong, per se. Bela liked sex, she liked having sex with her friends, and she wasn't shy about asking. Fenris himself had slept with her, once, a while ago, but that was it.

"Not _everyone_ ," Marian demurred but ruined it with a laugh.

"Well!" Leandra said, coming back into the kitchen. "So this is the Anders I've heard so much about. It's so good of you to bring him home, finally, Garrett."

"Mother, it's been . . . a week?"

"Well, we've been dating longer," Anders said. "But yes, a week of engagement."

"It's not every day that my son gets engaged," Leandra said, leaning over and patting Anders on the hand. Anders looked uncomfortable, but he just nodded. "So you're a doctor?"

"Ah, yes," Anders said.

Fenris was aware that Anders was not, despite the typical accent, British; his name would have given away Scandinavian ancestry. But right at the very moment, he sounded quite Nordic. There wasn't any good way to tell him his accent was showing, though, so Fenris held his tongue.

"And where do you work?"

"Oh, I'm in the emergency department at New York Presbyterian," Anders said. "I'm an infectious disease specialist."

“Lower Manhattan?”

“Yes.”

"And you're working ED shifts?" Bethany said, her interest piqued.

Fenris quite liked Bethany; she was sweet in a way that no other member of the family really was. Of course, she was about to attach herself to Anders, so that was that.

Carver still looked suspicious of Anders, but it wasn't until after the delicious coq au vin and associated side dishes were gone that he blurted out, "I don't believe you."

Marian looked up. "What's not to believe? I have pictures." She'd been telling a story of some ridiculous drunk that she'd had to throw out of the bar and had, indeed, been showing off the pictures.

(Fenris had been there and the story was actually more ridiculous than what Marian had told her mother, but he didn't feel the need to issue corrections.)

"Not that," Carver said. "I don't believe that Garrett's been dating Anders long enough to be engaged to him."

"Why wouldn't you believe that?" Malcolm asked dismissively. "Garrett mentioned him to me several weeks ago."

"I've known Anders for a while," Marian said. "I introduced them. You know Garrett. It was pretty much love at first sight."

"But he never told me!" Carver said. "And I talked to him, like, twice during that time."

"He told me," Fenris said, surprising himself by speaking up. He didn't like lying, but if there was one person in existence he was going to lie for, it would be Garrett Hawke.

Under the table, someone's hand found his and squeezed. It was his right hand, and Marian was sitting on his right. He did his damndest not to react until Leandra started chiding Carver for his lack of support for his brother and all attention turned towards them. Then he took a moment to slide a glance at Marian, but she was watching her mother as if her hand wasn't still in his under the table.

Odd.

***

Garrett was quiet on the way home, but apparently that unnerved Anders enough that he started babbling whenever there was something approximating a silence. He complimented Garrett's family home, his old bedroom (many times redecorated since his childhood), Leandra's cooking, the flowers, the food again, the neighborhood . . . Finally, Garrett just said, "Anders."

Anders shut his mouth with a click. "I'll shut up."

"You don't have to," Garrett said, "but you also don't need to be nervous."

"I don't?"

"No," Garrett said, trying to put every ounce of conviction he had into his voice. They were on the Metro-North train and it wasn't exactly empty, so he wasn't sure how well it worked, but Anders held his tongue until they got off the subway altogether and started walking back to the condo.

"I was in high school," Anders said. "Not that, you know, that's an excuse for anything. But it was a boarding school for children that were wards of the state--they try not to do that, but sometimes people don't do well in the foster system. I didn't, and they didn't know it was about my Healing abilities until I was most of the way through high school, and this was before that."

"Mm," Garrett said. "I'm very sorry you had to go through that. Go on, if you want to."

Anders did pause for a couple minutes, enough to walk the length of a block and turn. "Do you want me to?"

"Yes," Garrett said, because any other answer would provide an excuse for him not to talk.

"I had another friend, Kristoff, who was also there with me, although he was a day student, and he was . . . he wasn't a delinquent or anything, not really. He just had very strong feelings about certain kinds of justice, and . . . well, I agreed with him, and so I helped him."

"Helped him . . .?"

"Make bombs, blow up the church." Anders shrugged. "I don't--I don't have any excuses anymore. It's been half my life since that happened. I did my community service, helped them rebuild the church, helped out the families whose service was disrupted by the church. I did it all before my eighteenth birthday, before they told me that I wasn't crazy and I could, in fact, see how people were hurt. I haven’t been in contact with Kristoff since then. And if your question is, how did you manage to do something that would hurt people while you're a Healer, yeah, I don't have an answer for you on that."

They were home by then, Garrett opening the door and kneeling down to scritch Barkspawn's ears even while he still listened to Anders talk. "You seem . . . have you talked to someone about this?"

"I don't need a counselor," Anders said, the pitch of his voice rising. "It was--everything was fine. I had gotten past it, I had a job, I'm in a different fucking country, and then whatever it is you call her got involved."

"Aunt Meredith," Garrett said absently. "Look, I mean, sure, you had it under control, but circumstances have changed."

"Well, we can't all have idyllic, moneyed childhoods," Anders said.

That stung. That more than stung. "Let's not do this," Garrett said, standing. He went to the back door and let Barkspawn out, closing the door behind him for a moment. It was definitely not his finest moment, to walk away from this kind of fight. Anders had been uncomfortable with Garrett's familial wealth--and the privilege that came with the family's connections, not entirely linked with the money but not separate from it, either--the entire time. They had to address it now, because this wasn't the kind of topic that needed to fester, but--"Damnit," Garrett said, quietly enough that even Barkspawn didn't react.

It had been a long day already. What with Anders moving in just yesterday, and the revelation, and then Carver being an asshole, and Garrett being terrified that whatever backup he had wasn't going to be sufficient for his mother--and the desperate relief of Fenris _lying_ for him--and whatever the hell was going on between Fenris and Marian, that was a different matter altogether . . . Garrett was tired. He didn't want to have this fight now, he didn't want to have to be the reasonable adult here. Why was he always the reasonable adult? Sure, of course he wanted to subsist on ramen and takeout; sure, he wanted to leave his laundry undone, the dishes unwashed, and his bed unmade, but who the hell was going to do all those things if he didn't?

Maybe it had something to do with being the eldest, but he and Marian had gotten drunk while complaining about having to be an adult. Unlike a lot of people he knew, once they were done complaining, they simply got on with it.

He didn't _have_ to marry Anders, but everyone--including himself--would be a little bit happier and the world would be a little bit of a better place if he did, so he was going to. But before he could get there, he had to go inside and address this stupid money hangup that Anders had.

He didn't consider himself--or his family, for that matter--to be a bunch of snobs, but he had had the sheer magnitude of his wealth and privilege smacked into his face repeatedly over the years by various situations. The most long-running and obvious was Fenris. Until the lawsuit against his former master/adoptive parent and the state of New York had concluded, bringing him a solid nest egg in damages for emotional and physical pain and suffering, Fenris had been living off of a stipend and, subsequently, the largess of the Hawke family. It had taken a couple of years after that for Fenris to be able to spend more than the bare minimum after that. A couple more years passed before he knew enough about budgeting and compound interest that he didn't panic every time a large expenditure came up.

Garrett knew this, because he'd been there through a lot of the panic attacks and bad choices. He'd also learned that there was a certain amount of shutting up that he had to do.

But he really didn't know how to get Anders through all of this. He barely knew the man, he was realizing, and it was just going to take time--time they didn't have.

Time he was wasting while standing around woolgathering, while Barkspawn sat and stared at him. The dog had clearly already done his business and was wondering why Garrett hadn't let him back in, so Garrett girded his loins mentally and headed inside.

The living room was empty, as were the kitchen and the master bedroom. All the lights were off, too, and his heart leaped into his throat. Where was Anders? Had he left? Nothing seemed to be missing; Garrett even checked the bathroom, and Anders's toothbrush was still there. He probably hadn't gone far, but where was he? Had he gone on a walk? Was he going to be okay? The neighborhood was pretty safe, but still. Garrett hadn't heard the front door open when he was in the backyard, but maybe he wouldn't have recognized the sound even if he had.

Garrett headed back for the kitchen, but as he walked by, he realized that the door to the second bedroom was closed. He couldn't remember if he'd left it closed earlier, so he stepped up to the door and listened.

All he could really hear was his pulse pounding in his ears, but he still thought it was worth knocking on the door. "Anders?" he called softly as he did.

The bedframe squeaked and the door opened about an inch. "What do you want, Garrett?"

"Oh, good, you're still here," Garrett said all in a rush; he grabbed the door frame against the tide of relief threatening the integrity of his legs.

"Where else would I go?" Anders asked.

Garrett felt his face drain. Right, of course, Anders really had nowhere else to go. "I'm sorry, I'll just--we need to talk, but it can wait--" He shut his mouth on a click, because he was babbling and that wasn't helpful.

"I'm going to sleep," Anders said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay, good night," Garrett said, but Anders closed the door before he finished speaking.

Maker preserve him, now he really felt like an asshole. He should kick himself out of his own fucking house. At least they had a second bedroom. Any conversations that they really needed to have--and there were at least two of them that he could think of--could be had at a later time.

He went into the living room without really thinking about it and sat heavily on the couch, his head going into his hands. Barkspawn licked his face and whined. 

"Yeah,” Garrett said. “Me too, buddy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the chapter that required a deep look into the Norwegian juvenile justice system, which is quite different from the US version. I've come up with something that appears plausible, by my reading, but I can't claim any accuracy. Also, I don't mean to cast aspersions on the Norwegian Lutheran church as a whole, but any individual church/church school can have issues.
> 
> Hospital employees in the US, in my experience, tend to refer to what most of us call the ER (the Emergency Room) as the ED (the Emergency Department). I mean, it obviously isn't a single room.


	7. ~in which Marian and Fenris fight, and then they do not fight~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris sort of walks Marian home. Marian invites him in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we earn our E rating. See [Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/181051138188/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-7) for content notes.

Marian didn't realize that Fenris was walking her home until they were several blocks past where he should have turned to go to his own apartment. She thought about just not saying anything, but she really couldn't. So when they reached her block, she said, "Are you fucking walking me home?"

"I am walking with you," Fenris said calmly. "You are walking home."

"You know I'm just as capable of defending myself as you are. I mean. Yourself." This was ridiculous. "I can both kick people in the face and turn them into frogs." She couldn't, but she knew he got the point. "I'm not helpless."

"I have never thought you were helpless," he said. "That doesn't mean you cannot accept help anyway."

"But I don't _need_ it," Marian said.

Fenris shrugged.

"And you _hate_ me."

"I have _never_ hated you," he said.

"Haven't you?"

"You're infuriating," Fenris said, and wow, how did that word burn against her skin? "But you're the other half of Garrett's soul. How could I hate you?"

"Oh, so you like me because you love Garrett," she said, and probably in some part of her brain she meant it platonically--of course he loved Garrett; everyone loved Garrett--but the words twisted on her tongue and turned salacious.

"No." The word was quiet, low, but painfully clear in her ears. "How I feel about you is entirely on your own merit."

"I don't know if that's any better," Marian said, aware she was being irrational but finding it impossible to stop.

"So would you rather I be fond of you on your brother's behalf or hate you on your own accord? You cannot have both."

"I'd rather you didn't hate me at all," she said, and the words hung heavy in the air.

All of a sudden Fenris was stepping into her space, something he rarely or never did to anyone he wasn't trying to intimidate. He didn't particularly like to be touched, Marian knew that, but there he was, a hair's-breadth away from her. "I do not hate you. I have never hated you. I could never hate you. Do you need me to show you?"

Every inch of Marian was tingling, like the magic that rested just above Fenris's skin was sensitizing her own. "Show me," she breathed.

Slowly, giving her every chance to back away or change her mind, Fenris pushed up to his toes and set his lips against Marian's. Electricity--real or imagined--arced between them, and she bent her head and returned the kiss for all that she was worth.

Carefully, gently, she lifted her hands and rested them on his shoulders; he made a small noise into her mouth but didn't break the kiss. His hands settled on her hips, fingers spreading out and thumbs digging in just a little. Her tongue flicked over his lips quickly, just a test, but he opened his mouth and then, _oh_. It had been plausibly chaste before, or Marian could deceive herself and claim that, but now it was heated.

Fenris kissed like he did everything else, with a single-minded, near-intolerable focus. Soon it was Marian's turn to whimper with what he could do with just his lips and tongue and the angle of his head. His hands hadn't strayed from her hips, although one thumb had found its way upward under her shirt and had reached bare skin. Those two points of unimpeded contact--their mouths and one single finger on her skin--felt like the twin terminals of a battery, and Marian, to mix her metaphors painfully, was drowning.

He pulled away a lifetime later, or probably only a minute or so, and looked at her, the green of his irises almost glowing. She couldn't tell if it was from the nearby streetlight or from magic, but she didn't care.

It took her two tries to say, "Upstairs?" and make it intelligible; her voice was husky and raw and oh so very dark, and she wasn't doing it on purpose.

"Lead the way," he said. His voice was even more rough, gravelly sex than usual, and she shivered.

She fumbled with the code into her building and fumbled again with her keys, all the while berating herself. Why was she nervous? She'd brought men--and women, and nonbinary folks--home fairly regularly. She'd had sex with her friends before, sometimes ill-advised, sometimes not. She'd had sex with her _brother's_ friends before, although not Fenris. Never Fenris, she'd thought; he'd never be interested. 

Except he clearly was, as his kiss and his hand on her hips--and his current hand on her waist--had shown. And she was oh so _very_ interested. Finally she managed to get the door open and closed behind them, and then they were in her apartment.

It was clean, because she typically kept it fairly neat, and he'd just been there a few days ago, but somehow it felt different. "Ah. Bedroom?" she said. She could put more than two words together into an actual phrase, she knew she could, and before Fenris could turn to go into her bedroom, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Wait. Is there anything I need to know?"

"I should think you know more than you need to about me," Fenris said.

"Which is why I'm wondering if there's anything I need to know," she said pointedly. 

Apparently they couldn't even get through this without a spat, but it was short-lived. Fenris's shoulders dropped; Marian hadn't even noticed them rising in tension. "I would advise against blocking my route out of the room, if that becomes necessary. Also, I've got some bruising on the right side of my ribs. You may want to avoid that area. I don't necessarily enjoy pain during sex."

"Okay, you're on top," Marian said easily.

"I didn't say that." He eyed her up and down, lingering on her breasts. "I would, however, suggest not pinning me down when you are riding me."

"Yes, let's do that," she said, a rush of heat to her face causing her to flush, she knew.

"Is there anything _I_ need to know?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.

Marian shrugged. "I'm an open book." It was a bad answer, she knew it, but she wasn't hiding anything in particular. He'd known her for ten years, so he knew about some of her shitty exes, but she'd managed to come out relatively unscathed. She wouldn't be comfortable with him bringing a knife into the bedroom, but from what she knew about his past, she was certain he'd be horrified if she mentioned it. Other than that, she rarely felt the need to conceal anything. Even her natural hair color was pretty common knowledge, because it was the same as Garrett's.

"Other than the fact that you're part owner of The Hanged Man, not just a random bartender, and the fact that you make your bed every day."

"I doubt either of those things will affect the next couple hours," she said with a shrug. Somehow him knowing those things was more embarrassing than the fact that he was about to see her naked.

"You, Marian," he said, quirking a grin, "are a functional adult pretending to be a disaster."

"No, I promise I'm still a disaster," she said. "But I suck dick like a champ and my tits are spectacular, so how about we go see about messing up my well-made bed?"

Fenris chuckled, but not in a way that implied humor. It skated up her spine like lightning, and she wouldn't have been surprised to find her hair set on fire. "Let's."

Even though the hall to her bedroom was about two steps long, it took them several moments to traverse it; he pinned her against the wall to kiss the living daylights out of her, and she returned the favor--albeit without so much pinning--about half a step further along.

The one problem with a properly made bed was that she had to pause for a moment to drag most of the covers down to the foot, but at least she'd done this enough to know she'd better get it done now rather than trust it to be done later. Fenris's hands stayed on her ass as she bent over, and once she was done, she pulled him in for another searing kiss, returning the ass-grab.

Oh, Maker bless. She knew he was wiry-muscular from lucky genetics as well as his martial-arts practice, and she knew he had a killer ass from staring at it when she was pretending to herself that she simply wasn't, but good goddamn she seriously wanted to take a bite out of it, or maybe bounce quarters off if it. "Holy shit, Fen, your ass," she said as soon as she could detach her mouth from his.

"Holy shit, yours," he said in return and leaned in for another kiss, and okay, Marian's ass was pretty good but not a fucking work of art like his.

Also a work of art? His tongue and what he was currently doing with it. She really fucking hoped he liked eating pussy.

"Pants," she said, once she could breathe again. "I mean, shirt too, but _pants._ "

"Yes, you should definitely remove your pants," he said, hands moving to her belt; she let him and started working on his own.

Her boots zipped up the insides, so she had to stop a moment to take them off before her jeans would come all the way off. She also hadn't really thought about wearing the good underwear today, so it was polka-dotted and not necessarily sexy, but he seemed to appreciate it.

More likely he appreciated the fact that her pants were off and he was one step closer to a naked Marian, but whatever. She'd finally gotten his belt undone and was going for the button and zipper--wait, no zipper, was he wearing 501s? God, they took forever to get off but why were the buttons so fucking sexy? He was taking advantage of the fact that she was leaning over to nibble on her ear, which, he could keep that up forever, she'd be fine with that. But eventually she had to stop and let him kick the jeans off, and his boxer-briefs or whatever he'd been wearing under the jeans had gone with them, if he was even wearing underwear at all (he had been; she spotted them later) and then all of a sudden there was his dick.

Marian answered a question that she'd carefully avoided having for years: no, there were no silver magic-lines on his junk, although they did lick onto his ass. Which she knew because she'd dropped to her knees and had him turn around, leaning his weight on his hands on the wall. There was a good foot and a half between his torso and the wall itself and he could have gotten away at any moment, but it felt just enough like she had him at her mercy that she fucking loved it.

"Are you going to eat my ass?" he inquired, as if he were asking about the weather.

Marian laughed. "If you want me to," she said, "but no, I was just going to admire it." She kissed the base of his spine, between the two dimples at the top of his butt. "You know, get my hands all over it for real." The tail of his shirt was a little long, though, and she pushed her hands under it, trying to indicate to him that he should take it off.

He did, and all of a sudden he was nude in front of her, and Marian lost her concentration again for a moment. His back muscles were finely sculpted, from surprisingly broad shoulders to a narrow waist, shifting under his skin as he moved back into his position against the wall. His skin wasn't perfectly smooth; there was evidence of old scars and a few newer scrapes, probably from whatever jiu-jitsu match had given him the multicolor bruises on his left ribs. "Maker preserve me, your body is a work of art."

"Thank you," Fenris said, voice solemn. "I've worked hard on it."

Marian started at his ankles and ran her hands up the backs of his legs, slowly and surely so it wouldn't tickle. "I can tell." She cupped the globes of his ass and massaged gently before getting her feet under her and kissing her way up the length of his spine, her hands only a few inches behind. Ending with a kiss on the side of his neck, she pressed her front into his back.

Fenris let out a shuddering breath. "You," he said, "are wearing entirely too much clothing."

"Would you like to do something about that?" she asked him.

"Yes. Yes, I would." He turned in her arms and slid gentle fingers under the hem of her shirt; with her help, or perhaps cooperation was a better word, he raised it over her head and off and threw it aside. Next he looked down at her breasts; Marian thought it was just to look at them, but he reached around behind her to find the clasp on her bra and undo it. The bra straps, no longer under tension, fell off her shoulders, and she shimmied the rest of the way out of it, leaving a pile of molded foam and elastic in Fenris's hands.

Last, he pushed her underwear over her hips, and she let them fall to the floor, stepping out of the fabric. "You are a work of art as well," he said, hands shaping the curve from her hips to her waist to her breasts.

"As long as it's not Cubist art," she said, attempting a joke but aware it would probably fall flat.

"Quite the opposite, really," he murmured and caught her for another kiss.

Full-length skin-to-skin contact lit up the kiss immediately: he made another hungry noise into her mouth and she groaned deep in her throat and kept on kissing him. His cock was hard against her hip, also feeding the inferno growing inside her. She'd avoided touching it earlier not out of a lack of desire, but because she knew if she got started with that, she'd never get to touch him in every single place that she wanted to, but now--She snaked a hand between them and wrapped it around him, and he did break the kiss to groan and nip at her shoulder.

"Marian," he said, after he'd let her stroke him for a few moments, "I will not kneel for you, but if you lie on the bed, I'd very much like to eat you out."

Fenris saying dirty things in his ultra-precise upper-crust British accent was never not going to make her wet, even though she'd just discovered that about five or ten minutes ago. Hell, half her family had a similar accent, but most of them let the edges blur in a general sort of Americanization. Fenris definitely had not. "There's stuff in the drawer," she said, waving her hand in the general direction of her nightstand, and backed up to flop full-length on her bed.

"What sort of stuff would you like me to use?" he asked, crawling over her.

"Condoms," she said. "I'm on the Pill, but we're still using condoms."

"Of course," he said. "Barriers for oral sex?"

Marian took a second to force her head into something approaching rational thought. "I'm willing to go without if you are."

He nodded. "It's not much of a risk, on my end."

"Then go for it."

"I shall," he said and leaned down for another kiss. "But not quite yet."

"What-- _ohhhh._ " Right, her breasts. Those were a thing. At the moment, they were a thing that appeared to have a direct line to her clit, the way his lips and tongue on her nipple felt. His ministrations were riding that delicate line between "great" and "too much," and she dug her fingers into the mattress, for lack of anywhere else to grab.

"Don't rip the sheets," he said with an almost feral grin as he looked up for a moment before switching sides. "Or do I need to restrain you?"

"No," she said--she didn't particularly like having her hands tied--but then the idea of him using all that wiry strength and leverage to keep her in one place hit her and she sucked in a breath. "But maybe with your hands? Next time?"

Next time? Where had that come from? Would there even be a next time? She didn't have time to ponder that thought because he shifted from straddling her hips to kneeling between them and caught her hands in a short series of fluid motions. Maker, but she could watch him move all day, every day. Why didn't she go to more of his competitions?

He leaned forward to rest a little more of his body weight on her hands. She strained against him--not with all of her strength, but enough of it that he could feel that she was trying--and he watched her face carefully, eyebrows raised. He'd let go in an instant if she shook her head or said no or stop or anything, she knew, but that was the opposite of what she wanted. She nodded at him and relaxed back into the mattress, letting his hands press hers down.

Fenris's smile was nothing if not self-satisfied, and he bent his head down to kiss and nip at her stomach, her hips, and then her inner thighs. He let his lips rest over her pubic hair for a long moment, and then he let go of her hands, turning them over so her palms were on the sheets and patting them once. "Keep them there," he said with the offhand confidence of someone who knew he'd be obeyed, and she nodded, probably unnecessarily.

He used his fingers to trace lines on her thighs, where he'd had his mouth before; she wondered if he'd left marks and if they'd stay past morning. A whisper of breath fanned over her cunt, and she looked down to see him, eyes closed, taking a moment to inhale her scent. Her head fell back against the pillow as she groaned because dear God or Maker or Creator or whatever one called a deity, she was going to die.

He finally got his mouth on her, and she lost all ability to process any information that wasn't Fenris eating her out. Not only was he skilled with his tongue, which she'd known from the first time they'd kissed, but also he was smart and a quick learner, which in all fairness she'd also known. What she had _hoped_ , or would have if she'd hoped at all, was that he'd put those things together and use them to take her apart.

It was clear that he was taking his time, and Marian loved it and hated it at once. He licked everywhere but where she wanted him at first, and somewhere in the back of her head she knew it was because he was trying to learn her body, learn her reactions, but he was a rotten _tease_ and she said as much.

He raised his head, which made her whimper, and said, "You enjoy it."

Without waiting for an answer, he went back to what he'd been doing, which at that moment was fucking her with his tongue, shallow thrusts inside her, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

It felt like he took ten years before he finally got around to using his tongue directly on her clit, and by then she was pretty much vibrating off the bed. Once, very early on, she'd set fire to some curtains by not paying attention to controlling her ability to do magic during sex, and Fenris was sending her very quickly down that path. She inhaled deeply through her nose and let it out on a count of eight; it was shuddery and uneven but it at least cleared her head the percent or two necessary so that she didn't do something irrevocable to the linens.

Her hands were still on the mattress, palm down, a few inches out from her hips; she wanted to put her hands on his head and run her fingers through his hair, wanted to see if it was as soft as it looked (it couldn't possibly be, could it?) but she damn well knew better. Maybe later, maybe next time. She couldn't stop the back of her mind from cataloguing the sheer number of things she wanted to try, the things she wanted to do with (and to) him. Maybe she'd get to ride him this time, but also she wanted to blow him and drag him into the shower and eat his ass in there and maybe he'd be into receiving anal because she had a really nice strap-on that hadn't gotten much use recently. And she wanted him to pound her into the mattress, but also she wanted to be able to hold onto his ass while he did that, to feel those lithe, powerful muscles flex as he thrust. She wanted to tease him as much as he had teased--was teasing--her, and she wanted to suck his dick right down and get to business.

And then he slid a finger inside her and pressed up gently, and she cried out.

"Good?" he asked.

"Yes yes yes," she said quickly, so he'd go _back_ to what he was _doing_ \--it made her feel full and achy but also _so_ very close to coming her brains out all over his face--

\--and that was what did it, the combination of his tongue and his fingers and the image her brain supplied of his face shiny with her come. She tensed and shot up the mountain and straight off the cliff, crying out his name. "Fen!"

He left his fingers--there were two now--inside her, which she appreciated, but crawled up the bed again to kiss her, and yes, his face was wet, all the way up to his eyelashes. She curled up despite the ache of overwork in her abs and met him, hands still glued to the mattress. When he realized that, he broke the kiss to say, "You can move your hands," and she did, shot them straight up his back to cup his head gently and then stroke his hair.

It wasn't quite as soft as it looked; she recognized the sticky feeling that meant that he'd put some sort of product in it, probably to keep it from frizzing or curling. She crunched a couple of strands between her fingertips but avoided disheveling it completely. Although he'd undoubtedly shower before he went to work Monday morning, it was only polite.

"I presume you enjoyed yourself," he said, shortly thereafter. There was a certain amount of self-satisfaction in his words, but she couldn't exactly blame him as he had just blown the top off of her head, metaphorically speaking.

"You know, a little," she said, just to needle him, but he just chuckled and rested his head on her shoulder. He withdrew his fingers slowly, but she made a small protesting noise anyway.

"You can have more if you want it," he said.

"You mean your fingers or your dick?" she said.

"Either, both." He thought about it for a moment. "Well, perhaps not both at the same time. I'm gifted, but not that gifted."

"You sure are gifted," she said. Her mind had always characterized him as "small," because he was shorter than she was and narrower of build, but occasionally the world conspired to remind her that her standards were a little off. He _was_ a couple inches shorter than her, sure, but that still put him at nearly six feet tall. Also dick size didn't necessarily correlate to height and it certainly didn't correlate with sexual prowess, but, you know, it was nice that he had both.

She felt him shrug against her. "I'm not so egotistical to think that that's the be-all and end-all."

"Yeah, I know," she said. "You conclusively proved it. Now roll over; it's my turn."

He obliged her by rolling onto his back. "Do you want me to keep my hands to myself?"

"Hell, no," she said. "You can even pull my hair if you want. Just don't choke me."

"I would not," he said, voice a little too even, and she leaned down and kissed him.

"I know," she said. "You may want to hold onto something, though."

She'd seen him shirtless a number of times, mostly by accident when he'd either been Garrett's roommate or when he was crashing at Garrett's place or their parents' house. He'd come on vacation with them a few times, including one memorable trip to the lake house when he'd come out to go swimming in just board shorts and the entire Hawke family, from Malcolm on down to Bethany, all stared. They could all See, even Carver who had no other talent, and it was the first time that any of them other than Garrett had seen the full extent of the silver lines that wrapped around his body.

It was very possible that Marian had been staring for another reason; he'd been perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three at the time and had finally grown out of being a gangly young man and into the first layer of wiry muscle. In regular clothing, he still looked thin; out of it he had been starting to look quite a bit more powerful.

Of course, at the time, he'd stammered and gone inside for a rash guard and continued wearing it or another shirt the rest of the vacation. Garrett had yelled at the entire family for being rude and most of them had tendered their apologies in some way or another. (Marian herself had written "sorry for being an asshole" on a slip of paper and stuffed it into one of his shoes. She'd never been a hundred percent clear if he'd actually received it, but she'd also never wanted to ask.)

In any case, what lay under his clothing was not necessarily a surprise, but his reactions--quiet but obvious, since she knew to pay attention--were. She'd thought he disliked being touched, but apparently that was only either by strangers or in situations not under his control. He clearly craved her hands on him, arching up into her touch as she spread her fingers across his chest and directing her where he wanted her most--his collarbone and where his shoulder and traps met it. "Here?" she said, using her nails lightly.

He almost shot off the bed. "Yes, there," he said.

"Are you sure?" she asked, but at the same time, she leaned her head down and flicked her tongue over his skin.

"Quite," he ground out, and she chuckled, taking pity on him and pressing open-mouthed, sucking kisses to the spot.

"I won't leave marks," she said in between rounds.

"I would not be offended if you did," he said, which sounded like a ringing endorsement to her. She added teeth and more suction until he cried out in hoarse pleasure.

All of his skin was sensitive, apparently; even though she took care not to tickle him or cause any unexpected pain, he shuddered at all of her touches. A brush of fingertips over a nipple caused another arch of his back; a delicate bite caused a low grunt, and a quick suck made his hands fly to her head to keep her in place. She was more than happy to oblige, using her tongue and lips for long moments until he let her go. She did avoid the right side of his ribs with anything other than the softest of kisses as she made her way down to trace the ridges of his iliac crests with the tip of her tongue.

His cock was hard and leaking and mere inches from her lips, but she looked up at him for confirmation. "You ready for this?"

He nodded. "Not too long, I'm afraid," he rasped. "If you had been thinking of riding me. My control is not absolute."

She'd managed to make him speak partial nonsense, which she chalked up as a win in her column. "I won't make you come yet," she said and licked some of the pre-come off the tip of his dick.

He gasped, arching again; she admired the lines of his abs as he apologized, babbling. "I'll stay still," he said.

"I'll try to be better about not surprising you too much," she said.

"No, do go on. I like your surprises."

"In that case," she said, and she swallowed him down in one swift movement, showing off her lack of gag reflex.

"Maker preserve me," he said, and she swallowed around him, making him thrust again. But she knew it was probably coming and backed off a little to compensate, putting a hand on his hip to remind him.

"Marian," he gasped. "Are you trying to kill me."

It wasn't actually a question, so she didn't answer it, except by withdrawing slowly and using her tongue on the head of his cock.

She knew she wouldn't have too long--he was too wound up and she didn't have the patience to wind him back down and then up again--so she just showed off for a couple minutes, deep-throating him a few more times and rolling his balls gently in one hand. When she finally sat up, she was willing to swear his eyes were glowing, they were so wide and bright as he looked at her. "Are you going to put me out of my misery?" he asked.

"Is this misery?"

"You have a point."

"Grab me a condom?"

He reached over and opened the drawer. "Are they under or behind your vibrator?"

Marian laughed and leaned over him to move the vibrator--large and ostentatiously purple--out of the way. He pulled a few packets out, selected one, and handed it to her. She wiped a hand off on the sheets before tearing the packet open and rolling the condom over his cock as he held it still for her. "Keep your hand there for a second," she said and moved up on him so she could sit back on his dick.

Once the head was inside her, which, by the way, was a really nice stretch in and of itself, she pushed his hand out of the way and sat all the way up. It took a minute or so to slide down, but once her ass hit his hips, she got her feet in the right place and shifted herself back up.

This was going to hurt tomorrow. Her abs and quads were already complaining, but they'd be screaming as much as she would be when she was done. There was no way she’d trade it for anything. She watched his face more than anything else, watched his eyes following the bouncing of her breasts. He then watched his own hands trace up her thighs and hips and over her ribs to her waist, seemingly as entranced by the movement of her muscles as she had been by his. 

His cock inside her was thick and hot and _perfect_ ; she felt so full when she bottomed out that she just stayed there a moment, clenching around him, making him gasp. Some part of her expected to feel as if she were in control when she was on top; she usually did. But right then and there, she felt more like a supplicant than a goddess, with her benevolent deity approving of her every movement.

Or something like that. She couldn’t think; she was too busy riding Fenris’s dick.

Eventually his hands landed on her hips and grasped. "I'm close," he said, his head falling back against the pillow and his eyes squeezing shut as he thrust up to meet her. "I can't last much longer."

Fortunately she wasn't far off herself; the way he filled her and the way he watched her had gotten her about ninety percent of the way, and she just needed a few strokes of her own fingers to get her the rest of the way there. "Me too," she said, rubbing her clit. Her other hand went to his chest to stabilize herself, and the heat of his skin felt as if it might burn her. "Come with me."

"Yes," he hissed, curling up to watch her.

It wasn't simultaneous, but it didn't matter; she came a second time, her breath and a moan spilling out of her on some fricative that might have been his name. She was still clenching around him helplessly when he groaned and sat up. With some sort of move she wasn't coherent enough to comprehend, he got his knees under him and then flipped her onto her back. "I just need--"

"Yes--"

"Marian, you--"

"Yes, yes, Fenris, just--"

"I--Marian!" He thrust a final time, deep, and held himself still above her for a gasp or two before he collapsed.

She wrapped her arms around him, but her muscles were so noodly from exertion that unless she would have locked her fingers, they wouldn't have stayed. Instead she patted his shoulder kind of absently and rubbed his biceps as he tried to catch his breath.

He withdrew well before she wanted him to leave, but that was the nature of condoms; she gave him a moment or two in the bathroom alone before joining him to wipe off. "Are you staying?" she asked.

"For a while, at least," he said.

"Good," she said.

***

Fenris woke with a start some time later; it was deep in the middle of the night, he knew without checking. Everything vaguely hurt, but that was nothing new, and nothing hurt unusually enough to have woken him up. He'd probably been having some sort of nightmare, but he couldn't remember it even now, so that was fine.

What was not fine was the fact that he was not in his own bed, and hard on the heels of that was the knowledge of whose bed he _was_ in.

Marian's.

Garrett's sister Marian.

His best friend Garrett's twin sister Marian.

Whom he had just fucked.

The sensible part of his brain reminded him that Marian was an adult and her own person and not just Garrett's sister, but the rest of his brain, the part that knew how much he owed to Garrett and Malcolm and the entire Hawke family in general was horrified. How could he have betrayed their trust like this? And right after a family dinner?

And then there was the smallest part of his brain, the one he’d worked so hard to drown out, telling him that he had to leave before she hurt him. Or before he hurt her. Once he’d noticed it, he couldn’t stop hearing it.

He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Where had his clothing gone? It was too dark for him to see, but if he could locate his jeans, his cell phone was in the pocket and he could use that to find his shirt and shoes. Fortunately, his foot hit his jeans and he grabbed them, standing to pull them on.

His shirt was halfway over his head when he heard, "Fenris? Are you leaving?"

"Please do not stop me," he said once his shirt was on correctly.

"I'm not," she said, and she wasn't: nothing obstructed his path to the door, and nothing save the lock would obstruct his path out of the apartment. "Why are you leaving at two in the morning?"

He didn't want to answer her, but . . . "We shouldn't have done this."

"What, fucked? Why not?" She sat up but kept the sheet over her breasts. Pity, that, but he was not in a mood to be distracted.

"Because I am me and you are you," he said as he found his socks and shoes and donned them.

"You . . . are you really pulling the 'but you're my best friend's sister!' bullshit on me?"

"You are fully aware that the situation is distinctly more complex than that." He hadn't worn a coat, so as long as he still had the usual contents of his pockets--which he did--he could leave.

"Oh, I know," Marian said, "but this--" She gestured between them. "--doesn't have to be. Jesus, Fenris, it's just sex."

Somehow that burned, like salt in a wound. "Then if it's just sex, we can pretend that it did not happen. Because it should not have."

He didn't expect her to fold, but fold she did, like a house of cards. "If that's what you want," she said, her voice even.

"It is," he said.

"Then I expect I'll see you the next time you don't feel like cooking," she said. "Have a good night, Fenris."

He had no idea who that Marian was, but he also did not want to stick around and find out. "Good night."

Slipping out of her room, he closed the door behind him and then let himself out of the apartment and out of the building. It was late, but the bars had just closed and there were quite a few drunks staggering home.

He thought about getting drunk; he probably had enough alcohol at home, mostly wine, to do so. But tomorrow was Monday, and he had to go to work.

He didn't think drunkenness would be enough to make him forget what had been one of the most spectacular evenings of his life, anyway.

Infuriatingly _amazing_ woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Yes, that was six thousand words of porn.  
> 2) IF YOU PLAYED THE GAME AND ROMANCED FENRIS YOU KNEW HOW THIS CHAPTER WAS GOING TO END  
> 3) Yes, I know it's Dorian who sets fire to the curtains. Whatever.  
> 4) (for both people who have read my other stuff) YES I KNOW I DON'T USUALLY WRITE FEMSUB GUESS WHAT I DIDN'T PLAN ON THIS TURNING OUT THIS WAY IT JUST HAPPENED  
> 5) Funny story: at level 7 in the game, you get to pick a specialization. Also at level 14. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	8. ~in which no one is particularly happy~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrett complains to Fenris. Marian complains to Anders. Anders complains back. Fenris . . . complains to no one. It's a problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite Tumblr being a cesspool, there's still some more information [over there](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/181243743918/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-8) if you need it.

When Garrett left for work, Anders was still asleep; in all honesty, he'd left a little early so that would be true. He knew Anders had had a couple of short nights of sleep and he'd guessed that Anders would most likely stay asleep past seven, so he left at a quarter to. Barkspawn sighed as Garrett went to the door and he felt a little bit guilty, but only a little. "I'll make it up to you later, buddy," he whispered, and Barkspawn's stubby tail thumped on the couch cushions.

He really needed to . . . decompress, maybe? He'd brought a set of workout clothes so he could go for a run on his lunch break. Or he could go to the gym. Maybe Fenris would come with him, and he could--

Suddenly he really wanted nothing so much as to talk to Fenris. It was not an uncommon feeling for him, but it was probably a little early in the morning. Fenris also didn't particularly like Anders; they'd never really had that meeting between the two of them where they figured out how to coexist in Garrett's life.

But . . . Fenris would probably listen and talk it through with him anyway. He pulled out his phone and texted Fenris. _Hey, do you have time for lunch? I had a fight with Anders and I'd like to chat it out if you would be willing to listen._

_Of course I would be willing to listen._

Garrett sighed a little. _Thank you. If you have anything you need to talk about, you know I'm always here._

_There is nothing I need to discuss with you at the moment, but thank you for the reminder._

_Any time. I'll see you soon._

He went down the stairs to the subway with a little bit more pep in his step. He could talk it out with Fenris, and everything would be okay.

Lunch came sooner than expected; he'd spent all morning fighting with a database, which wasn't normally his job, but he needed it to do what he needed it to do and the IT department wasn't able to help. When Garrett got to the employee cafeteria over in Fenris's building at just before noon, he was a little harried and more than a little distracted.

He figured that was why he didn't notice at first that Fenris looked as if he hadn't slept in a few days, but he was partway into explaining the fight, or whatever it had been, before he let the sentence trail off and said, "Are you okay?"

Fenris abruptly flushed. It was a little disconcerting as he rarely did, or at least it was rarely this visible. "Don't worry about me," he said. "Do continue."

"You look exhausted," Garrett said.

"I will . . . discuss why with you when there is a reason to discuss why," Fenris said.

His words made absolutely no sense to Garrett, but he got the general meaning, which was _not right now._ "I'll hold you to that," he said.

"You are not wrong, though: you and Anders need to address the money issue or it will fester. But you would not if this were merely a marriage of convenience?" Fenris raised his eyebrows.

"'Marriage of convenience.' It makes it sound like I'm in a category romance," Garrett said, not really a deflection.

"And the fact that you know the correct name for them and did not refer to them as 'Harlequin romances' indicates that you are not unversed in the area."

"I listen when people talk," Garrett said with a shrug. His mother devoured them by the box. "Anyway. You asked a question. I figure even if we're getting married because we have to, we can be friends, and that's a kind of relationship where we should worry about things like this."

"You want to be friends with your intended spouse?"

"I wanted to think we already were."

"It is quite convenient, I suppose, that he's closer to your familial views on the policing issue than I am." Fenris sounded more than a little bitter, but he shook his head. "My apologies. I did not mean to interject my own issues into this conversation. You are a romantic, of course, although not so romantic that you wouldn't marry for a reason other than love. Are you sleeping with him?"

"Maker, no!" Garrett said, and then lowered his voice, because he'd spoken more loudly than he'd intended. "I don't--that's too much--he doesn't have a choice, Fenris."

"A choice in what?"

"He's living with me because we're getting married and we need to sell it to the authorities. He has no choice in that. I'm also the one with all the money, although he . . ." Garrett shook his head. "Never mind that. If I . . . proposition him, it may seem as if he has to sleep with me in order for all of this to work. I would never do that to anyone."

"Fair enough," Fenris said. "Although I do also feel that this is something you can and should discuss directly with Anders himself."

"Later," Garrett said. "First I--can I ask you a question?"

"Yes."

"Did it ever--how do you--" There was a way to ask this that wasn't insulting, right?

"How do I not care that you and every Hawke family member are independently wealthy?" Fenris asked, voice rich with irony. "It took some time and some discussion. Do you not recall?"

"Not enough specifics," Garrett admitted. "I know we talked about it, but it was a while ago, and anyway, I'm not marrying you." He kicked at Fenris's foot under the table, and Fenris shook his head.

"Good thing," he said. "Just continue not being an asshole, and you should be all right, or at least on the way to becoming all right."

"I was hoping for more specifics."

"Well, you can't get them from me, I'm afraid." Fenris at least looked sympathetic. "You need to get them from your fiance himself."

"Damnit, Fen, why are you right?"

"Habit, I suppose." Fenris smiled at him, and Garrett couldn’t help but grin back.

***

Marian woke up feeling the ache in her thighs and obliques and sighed, because it was a good ache. The bedroom still smelled like sex . . . but the other half of the bed was cold.

Right. Because Fenris, the rat, had left in the middle of the night and Marian, the coward, had just let him go.

Fuck.

She kicked off the covers and went to stand under the shower until she was at the very least cleaner, if not in a better mood. She needed to bitch about this with someone and she at least had a few minutes to decide who.

Garrett was obviously out, for a long list of reasons. She'd complained about bad dates at him before, but mostly about the behavior on the date part of the date itself. They were close, but he was still her brother.

Merrill would not be a good choice, so that was an easy discard. She wasn't as innocent or virginal as she looked, Marian knew, but she still wouldn't be comfortable knowing any of the details and then getting self-defense lessons from Fenris. Speaking of, she had to schedule those for Merrill. Since she and Fenris had apparently _never had sex_ , it wouldn't be a problem for her to sit in on the lessons.

Isabela seemed like the obvious choice, but she was busy, working two jobs that both seemed to creep into three-quarter time. That, and while she was perfectly capable of keeping her mouth shut when necessary, she seemed to have a slightly more elastic version of necessary than Marian did. Plus, she'd slept with Fenris in the past, Marian knew, and she would probably serve up more details of that encounter that Marian really wasn't interested in hearing about right at that moment.

Varric was probably not a bad choice; he was a great listener, he was never fazed by anything, and he'd generally been pro-Marian getting laid in the past. She'd just have to make sure that he wouldn't write it into one of his books. There was a Marian-like character in them, and a Fenris-like character, but they definitely weren't sleeping together in the books and . . . you know what, she really didn't want to give him any ideas.

Aveline was busy and rather prudish, when it came down to it, to the point where Marian had had to lock her in a closet with Donnic just to make them talk to each other. It worked--they were married, had been for a couple years--but Aveline would be uncomfortable with the topic. Who else was available?

Anders. He owed her, sort of. He was a good listener, at least when he'd had a modicum of sleep. He probably needed to complain about Garrett by this point, anyway, and who better to listen than her? (She was reasonably certain they weren't sleeping together yet, which meant that the complaints would be about Garrett leaving socks on the couch or whatnot.) Did he work today? Probably not, because he'd worked Friday and Saturday nights. She finished her shower, smeared lotion everywhere that had beard burn or a hickey or both (although he hadn't left that many marks; not as many as she left on him, certainly), and found her phone. _hey anders u around today? i need to bitch about boys if u ahve the time n brains_

The answer took about half an hour to appear, which wasn't terribly long in Anders time. _I could be persuaded to meet you for lunch. I'd welcome the distraction._

_u can bitch about garrett to me. i don't mind._

_Thank you for the offer. We'll see._

Huh.

_thm 11:30?_

_See you then!_

At 11:30 the bar would only have been open for a half hour, but there was usually a pretty decent crowd. Marian got there when the bar opened, commandeered Varric's table--he wouldn't be there for hours yet--and went back to talk to the chef about getting some lunch.

Between her share in the company and her current holding of Varric's share, that made her majority owner at somewhat over sixty percent. The chef, Orana, knew this, but Marian had spent the last three years convincing Orana not to be intimidated by her. Orana shook her head at Marian's request of chicken tikka masala. "We don't have half the ingredients and I don't have time to send anyone to go buy them. If you want Indian food, go find another restaurant."

"Damnit," Marian said good-naturedly. "Then I guess just two orders of whatever you think Anders and I would like."

"I can do that. Now shoo. Your hair is against health code."

"Your _face_ is against health code," Marian grumbled on her way out.

"I heard that!"

At least Orana was chuckling. She'd been quiet and a little sad when she first started working there, but she'd opened up and gotten more confident over the years.

Anders was about five minutes late, but he texted her from the subway. Orana delivered the food herself right after he got there, and they spent the first few minutes just eating. She'd gotten salmon and roasted vegetables with a lemon-dill sauce, and Anders had gotten a burger and fries, both drenched in cheese.

"This is quite a variation in food," Anders said.

"It's Orana being a mother hen," Marian said. "She thinks I need nutrients and you need sheer calories. She's not wrong." Also Marian really did like salmon, and there was enough butter on the entire thing that she didn't take it as an insult.

"They're not mutually exclusive," he said, looking at their plates, but he ate the burger and fries anyway.

Anders looked better and worse, she decided. Better, because he'd obviously gotten some sleep and his clothes were less wrinkled than usual. Worse, because his face was a little pinched around the edges in a way that sleep hadn't helped, which probably meant that he was mad about some part of his situation. Hopefully she'd get him to talk about it later.

Speaking of talking . . . she looked around the bar. There were people there, but none of them were probably sensitive to magic, she decided. She cobbled together a quick notice-me-not and hear-me-not and threw them over the booth.

"What did you just do?" Anders asked.

That was right, he couldn't See regular alchemical or mage-work. "Privacy barrier," she said.

He looked at her for a moment--actually, he probably Looked at her, if she wanted to get technical--and said, "You've got some mild abrasions on you. Did you fall off a bicycle or did you get laid by a person with a beard?"

"I don't even own a bicycle," she said, "and anyway, you know full well that you only get beard burn when the person either has a five-o'clock shadow or trims too aggressively right beforehand."

"So, a five-o'clock shadow, then? Is this the boy you wanted to bitch about?"

"Effectively, yeah," she said.

"Do I need to hurt anyone?"

"Ugh, no. Not yet."

"What happened?"

There was really no good way to do this. "I fucked Fenris."

Anders paused for a moment and blinked. "First time?"

"First time with him, yeah."

"Do you want congratulations or absolution?"

"Um?"

"Congratulations, Fenris is a good-looking man who, I gather, is quite athletic. Absolution, you haven't committed any intrafamilial crimes by sleeping with your brother's best friend."

"He is very athletic," Marian said, because it was the first thing her brain seized on from what he said.

"Why don't you tell me a little bit more about what happened," Anders said, apparently taking pity on her. "Not, like . . . details, but . . ."

"I got you," Marian said. She chased a red potato quarter around her plate, dragging it through all the butter she could find, and then popped it in her mouth, chewing slowly. After she swallowed, she said, "He followed me home. Or, I mean, I guess he walked me home. It wasn't creepy, he just . . . we were sort of talking, mostly just kind of quiet, and then we were on my block and all of a sudden he was there. And we had a fight and I basically dared him to kiss me, and--" She waved her hand in the air. "That's the part you don't really want to know about."

"I presume he was, ah--"

"I came my brains out more than once," she said.

"Well." Anders turned a delicate shade of pink. "Good. You deserve no less."

"Why did we never sleep together?" Marian asked idly.

"Because then it would be very weird if I married your brother."

The logic was backwards, but she let it slide. "We've--not at the same time, mind you, and not on purpose--slept with the same person more than once."

"Bela?"

"Of course."

"Can I ask about the other?"

Marian grinned. "This guy, Ari. Maker, but he was hot as fuck. He was like six-foot-eight and covered in tattoos and his voice was enough to make me wet in like two words. He never asked last names, so we didn't realize what had happened until several months later, but damn, that was a night to remember."

"Ah," Anders said. "Well, be that as it may, you spent the night with Fenris, a good time was had by all, why are you here complaining at me?"

"He left," Marian said. "It was two in the morning and I wake up to find him putting his pants on, and--" She winced. Some of her reasoning didn't really make sense unless Anders knew a little more than he did. "How much of Fenris's tragic backstory do you know?"

"I know there is one and I presume abuse is involved, but I don't know if Garrett has permission to tell me any more than that. Even if he did, he hasn't really had time."

Something about what Anders said rang a little false, the last sentence at least, but she could get to that shortly. "Yes. Wretched abuse. So when I say that I did very little to stop him from leaving, the explanation has more to do with that than my desire not to stop him, if that makes sense."

Anders nodded. "Enough sense."

"Anyway, he said what we'd done was a mistake, and that he couldn't believe that he'd slept with his best friend's sister, and that we should pretend that nothing had happened. He was desperate to leave, so I basically agreed and let him go."

He nodded again. "Seems valid. What you did, at least."

"But not what he did."

"I couldn't say. I don't know what was going on in his head."

"You've known Garrett for a week, right?"

"Thereabouts," Anders said guardedly.

"Do you really think Garrett's going to give a shit if Fenris and I sleep together?"

"No," Anders said, not even a heartbeat of hesitation. "No, he'll probably start planning your wedding, instead."

Marian shuddered. "Gross, but correct," she said. "But in general, yeah, I don't think you have to know Garrett well at all to know he's not like that."

"So clearly that wasn't why Fenris was freaking out," Anders said.

"Well, I mean, he could believe that Garrett would freak out about something like that, but . . . most likely, yeah, he was freaking out about something else."

"And you're wondering what that something else is?"

"Well, yes."

“Ah, Marian, can I ask you an odd question first?”

“Sure.” How odd could it be?

“What does Fenris Look like to you?”

Marian frowned. “He looks like he’s got glowing silver tattoos all over his body. Oh, I guess you can’t see them.”

“No, I can.”

“Then why do you ask?” She tipped her head to one side. “Wait, how can you see them?”

“Mmm,” Anders said. “You can’t see like a Healer does, I presume?”

“No,” she said. “Usually I just use Mage-Sight. Alchemy doesn’t show quite as much.”

“And Bethany’s never mentioned how they look to her?”

“No,” Marian said. “Why?” It had never occurred to her to ask her sister, and Bethany wouldn’t share if she could See something that was related to Fenris’s medical history.

“All the silver lines look like angry, partially-healed wounds to me,” Anders said simply.

Marian physically recoiled at that, leaning back against the scuffed wood of the booth. “Fuck,” she said, a stab of horrific guilt going through her. How many times had she Looked at him, just for her own, admittedly lustful, purposes? “I thought they were--they’re pretty, you know?”

“I know what you mean,” Anders said. “If he ever wants to--”

“I don’t think he can,” she said, after she could speak again. What kind of terrible person was she? “I know it hurts him to be touched by magic most of the time.”

“Wait, how did you two--”

“Not like that,” she said, reaching out to swat at Anders’s shoulder. “Like, he winces when he comes in the door here, even. God, I feel like I need to apologize. I didn’t--does Garrett know?”

"I have no idea, Marian. Should I ask?”

“Maybe later,” she said. “He probably does. Fuck. I guess I’ll just . . . keep it to myself. Not think about it for now. Unless you think I should tell him I know?”

“I don’t know what he’d want. I've met Fenris all of twice and he dislikes me."

"Why's that?"

"Because I said that I didn't think the Watchmen were necessary," Anders said.

"Oh, uh, yeah." She winced. "I mean, he's still Garrett's best friend and in general, the Hawke family is not pro-Watchmen, but . . . Yeah."

"How do he and Garrett manage that?" he asked. He sounded more than a little bitter, and Marian supposed she got it.

"Carefully. They simply don't talk about it much."

"Ah, yeah." Anders pushed his plate away and stared at the tabletop.

Marian paused. She felt a little better and a lot worse simultaneously, but it was a good opening to change the subject. "How's it going with you and Garrett, anyway?"

***

Anders felt a little bit more like part of the family after Marian texted him to request a bitch session, which was probably counterintuitive, but here he was. It also meant that there was something he knew that he probably shouldn't tell Garrett, but there were an awful lot of things that he knew that he shouldn't, wouldn't, or couldn't tell his erstwhile fiance, up to and including what he could see of Fenris’s scars, so this was just something else to add to the list.

But now she wanted him to dish in return. "It's . . . going," he said.

"Oh?"

"Well, we've had a bit of a spat," he admitted.

"What about?" Marian asked, looking sympathetic.

Did he really want to tell her? Surprisingly, he did. "Money, mostly."

"Oh, yeah," she said a little artlessly. "We've got quite a bit, as you probably know by now."

"You hide it."

She shrugged. "Not if you're looking, but a little, yeah. It took Garrett and Fenris a number of years to get past that whole part."

"Did it?"

"Well, Fenris didn't exactly grow up with money, and I'm guessing you didn't, either. Although you should have enough now."

"I'm doing all right," he said. "But no, I didn't grow up with any money at all. I may have said something unfortunate the other evening after dinner," he admitted. "We've been avoiding each other since."

"What did you say?" Marian asked. Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle.

Anders tried to recall the conversation in detail. "He'd said something about talking to a counselor--I can't remember exactly why, but he wasn't necessarily wrong--and I said, 'Well, we can't all have perfect rich-kid childhoods,' or something like that."

"Oof," she said.

He winced. "Yeah. I probably deserve the silent treatment that ensued."

"Kind of a dick thing to say, yeah." She was silent for a moment. "I'm not going to try to claim that we didn't have a pretty good childhood, or that we've necessarily had a bunch of difficulties since. I can't really say much, other than that we're all pretty dedicated to using our powers for good."

"I know that," he said, because he did.

"If you really can't deal with the money part of the equation, you probably need to think about whether this is something you want to continue with," Marian said. "I know it's rough, because you don't really have another choice that would allow you to stay here, but you know Dad would help you get settled, maybe in England, if that's what you want."

"You're being very calm about this," Anders said.

"You know," she said, "I really don't want you to leave. I want you to marry Garrett and beat Aunty Em and stay here and be happy, but I also can't change what's a dealbreaker for you."

"It isn't a dealbreaker," he said. "It isn't. I just--I need a moment."

"That's fair," she said. "Garrett's a reasonable man, I promise. Just tell him that. Sometimes you have to spell things out for him. I swear, he's the smartest of the four of us, but sometimes he's a bit oblivious."

"Does that work for everything?" he said. He really shouldn't have, because now Marian was going to ask what he meant.

"Most things, in my experience," she said, "yeah. What's going on? Is he leaving his socks all over the place?"

"No, he's surprisingly neat," he said. "And Barkspawn is behaving, since that was your next question."

"So . . .?"

Anders sighed. "I can count on one hand the number of times we've kissed," he said.

"Really?"

"Every time we start, he keeps stopping and talks about how he doesn't want to pressure me, because of the power differential and whatnot."

"And, I'm just spitballing here, but you _want_ him to pressure you." Marian grinned.

Anders buried his face in his hands and groaned. "I know he's your brother, Marian, but Maker preserve me, he's big and bloody gorgeous and so fucking nice and I just want him to break me in _half_."

She cackled, slapping the table in her mirth. "I've heard it before. You may just have to tell him straight out that you want to sit on his dick."

"Oh, I'll just do that, won't I?" he said. "You know, in between that big conversation about money and the equally simple one about Fenris."

"Eh, you know, marriage is hard," she said, still laughing.

"Not hard enough," he said under his breath, setting Marian off again.

"You've got to talk," she said, once she'd calmed down a bit. "Preferably before the wedding, but that isn't for a month, so you're probably okay to wallow in misery today."

"I'm not _wallowing_ ," he said. "At least, not much."

She patted him on the hand. "Like I said, it's okay if you are. Oh, hey, you know Merrill, right?"

"Yes?"

"Wait, Fenris hates you, though."

"What?"

"Fenris has offered Merrill self-defense lessons. She's a little intimidated by him, though, so I said that I or someone else would be willing to sit in on their lessons. I can't imagine she's afraid of you, so I figured you'd be a good choice, but if you and Fenris can't be in the same room, that's a problem." She looked a little disappointed.

"We sat through dinner just fine last night," he pointed out. "I should think we can put aside our differences just fine for Merrill."

"Oh, good point," she said. "I'll put you on the list. I don't know how it's going to work, yet."

"Yes, please do," he said. Merrill was sweet, and he was more than willing to do whatever he could to help her with this.

Someone--two someones, actually--came up to their table, which was odd enough on its own, but even weirder since Marian had warded the whole booth. They both turned to the intruders, a man a little older than Anders was, more like late thirties than early, with bleached-blond hair and sharp cheekbones, and a younger woman, maybe late twenties, red hair and leaf-green eyes.

"Oh, God," Marian groaned. "You again."

"I am sorry," the woman said, and she looked apologetic. "I can see you didn't want to be disturbed. Can we leave another note for Isabela?"

"You could have just left it at the bar," Marian said, but she took the note from the woman and shooed both of them away. "Now spend money or git."

"We'll, ah, git," the redhead said, and she dragged the blond man, who actually hadn't said anything the whole time, toward the door.

"I'm occasionally disturbed at the depths of your Americanization," Anders remarked.

"You sound more like an English prep-school boy than my dad, who actually was an English prep-school boy," Marian retorted.

They both burst into laughter simultaneously. "You know, if nothing else," Anders said, "I'll be happy to gain you as a sister."

"Ugh, gross, the last thing I need is another brother," she said, but she was grinning.

***

Fenris typically tried not to check his text messages constantly at work, but on one of his self-imposed computer-screen breaks, he did look and see that there was a message from Marian.

He did not want there to be a message on his phone from Marian.

He also quite desperately wanted there to be a message on his phone from Marian.

Counting to five, he inhaled and exhaled once and then unlocked the screen to see what the message actually said.

_Hey, if you're free to give Merrill a lesson either Tuesday or Wednesday night, either Bela, Anders, or I can be there as well._

That was not exactly the message he was expecting, for multiple reasons. _I can make either work. Who stole your phone?_

_What?_

_ur not texting liek this_ , he sent back, the texting slang and intentional misspelling causing his phone's autocorrect to have a conniption.

_omg fuck u i was trying 2 b polite_

There was the Marian he knew and--expected. The Marian he expected. _We'll do the lesson in the gym in my building, if that's all right with Merrill._

_cant see y it wouldn't be. wtb w/actual day_

_Okay, thanks._

He was looking forward to teaching Merrill self-defense. While he had taught some, since it was required to achieve a black belt in his particular dojo, he hadn't taught self-defense for the sake of self-defense in a while. The last person he'd really taught anything like this was . . .

. . . Marian. It had been Marian, just after college, when she'd asked him how to kick someone in the head.

Well, that didn't bear thinking about. They'd fought the entire time, sometimes bitterly, but at the end, she could, in fact, kick him in the head, and she had, once. Not hard enough to injure him, but she'd landed a kick, and that had surprised them both.

_ok tues 7:30 see u then_

_It's in my calendar._

Well, that was a thing that was happening. He did, indeed, put it in his calendar, and sent an invitation to Marian's email. She wouldn't accept it, he knew, but he enjoyed the small needle.

It really did feel like they were back to where they had been before that . . . night. Last night. The night they spent together. The sex that they had had. The sex that he had had with Marian Hawke.

He really did not need to think about this right now. His capacity for self-flagellation was, to be frank, nearly infinite, but he'd had enough counseling to know that it was something he should avoid. So he would not think about Marian.

His boss did not actually care what percent of his day he spent at his desk versus pacing around and thinking, as long as he got his work done, so he locked his computer and then went outside, taking a lap around the campus. The weather was cloudy, although it wasn't supposed to rain, and he was able to get a pretty solid pace going. He did have a certain amount of work left to get done, but he wasn't going to be able to do any of it if he couldn't concentrate.

In all honesty, he probably should call up his therapist and set up an appointment. Everything still vaguely hurt, and that typically indicated an emotional problem. He clearly couldn't discuss this with Garrett, as evidenced by lunch today. He'd considered it for a moment or two, but when it actually came to the time when he would have to say the words, _I slept with Marian,_ he simply couldn't. 

The worst part of it was, Garrett wouldn't even be _mad._ He'd probably be thrilled. But he wouldn't be thrilled for the right reasons.

Fenris and Marian simply weren't meant to be, and that had been obvious from the first day that they met. And Fenris wasn't sure he could settle for anything less than “meant to be” from her.

No, he really did need to talk to his therapist. He hadn't seen her in a few months, because he was doing quite well, most of the time. This, though, he couldn't let weigh on his soul, because it hurt in ways more than the obvious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want you to know that feelslikefire questioned whether the IT department would totally be useless while Garrett is fighting with a database, based on the few IT professionals she knows (her brother, my spouse), and I laughed at her and told her to ask her brother about his useless coworkers.
> 
> Also I have now baked Julekakke twice. It's really nothing like fruitcake at all (it's brioche with dried fruit and cardamom), but it's tasty as hell.
> 
> "Ari" is the Arishok, obviously. Garrett called dibs on sleeping with Ari if he was ever around again. In exchange, Marian got dibs on Isabela. You can see how that worked out.


	9. ~in which it gets worse, then worse again~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris gives Merrill a self-defense lesson. Garrett and Anders receive some bad news. Fenris walks Marian home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: The opening scene of this chapter contains Fenris talking about his feelings about his past and the rest of the chapter features the other characters dealing with it. It's probably the roughest chapter in the whole thing, which is why I'm putting the note here and not hiding it on Tumblr or at the end.
> 
> However, there are [more details on Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/181432905123/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-9) if you need them.

Marian had apparently told Anders to be at Fenris's place at 7:30 on Tuesday and then forgot she did so, because when she got there a few minutes early, he was already there, standing by the door. "I texted Fenris," he said.

"Oh," she said. "You can go home if you want. I can stay."

"I'm not sure I want to go home, really," he admitted. "If you like, you can go."

"I kind of want to watch this," she said, her own admission in return.

"Well, then, you're both here," Merrill said from behind Anders, and he and Marian both jumped. "I don't mind," she added.

"That's good, Daisy," Marian said, because it was the only thing that came to mind. "Are you ready?"

"No," Merrill said, "but I don't know that I ever will be, so I might as well do it anyway."

Fenris chose that moment to appear at the door and let them all in with a short nod. He was coolly polite to both Marian and Anders but warmed up a little when he nodded at Merrill; he almost smiled at her, and boy, wasn't that a thing.

(Marian kept all of her various non-mundane Sights carefully tucked away, and any thoughts about the matter carefully tucked away as well.)

The basement gym was dingy and sad but deserted. Marian had been in the gym a couple times over the three or four years that he'd lived in that building, and she always thanked the Maker that she wasn't prone to migraines, because the overhead light would definitely have given her one with its flickering. The heavy bag was duct-taped together, and at least one of the cardio machines had a sign that said BROKEN on it. But the middle of the room was open and covered with mats, and it was the one that they had access to.

Marian and Anders settled themselves in one corner; Marian got out her phone but promised immediately not to record anything unless Merrill asked her to. "I wouldn't do that to you," she said.

"I know, but . . ."

"Yeah."

Anders pulled a paperback book out of his pocket, something by James Baldwin, and settled in to read.

"What do you do for exercise?" Fenris asked Merrill.

"Yoga, some," she said. "I walk a lot. I don't have a gym membership or anything like that."

Marian wasn't surprised, as Merrill had actually shown up wearing yoga pants and an exercise tank top under a hoodie, all in shades of green.

"It's no problem," he said. "I just wanted to know that if I asked you to stretch or loosen up, would you have something to do, or should I suggest some stretches?"

"Oh, no, I can do that." She stripped off the hoodie and went into a sun salute. Fenris followed suit, although he hadn’t been wearing a hoodie in the first place. He was wearing something more along the lines of track pants and a wicking t-shirt, both black. Neither was barefoot, probably because of the gross public nature of their location, but Fenris had on what Marian would swear were rock-climbing shoes, and Merrill had changed into what looked like ballet slippers.

At the end of a few repetitions, Merrill sank into lotus position and Fenris knelt, sitting on his heels. "Do you go by Daisy?" he asked.

"Oh, no, that's just what Varric calls me, like how he calls you 'Broody.'"

"Ah," Fenris said. Marian couldn't be imagining the slight distaste in his voice, but she kept her chuckle to herself. "How long ago did you move to the city?"

"Three years ago," she said. "After college."

"Where are you from originally?"

"A small town in northern Minnesota."

"Mm." He took a breath and flattened his hands on his thighs. Marian frowned. "I can teach you how to punch someone correctly, how to avoid getting hit, how to incapacitate someone so you can run away, but none of this will matter if your instincts are still telling you to trust everyone."

Marian hadn't gotten this part of the lecture, probably because even though she'd had probably just as sheltered of a childhood as Merrill had, her instincts generally told her to hate everyone.

"But . . ." Merrill said.

When it didn't seem she was going to go on, Fenris spoke again. "I don't want to change your essential nature. You see the good in people, first and foremost, and that is rare and lovely. But the best way to defend yourself is to avoid putting yourself into situations where it may be necessary." He paused and shook his head. "Wait. I do apologize. That sounded like I was blaming any portion of your current situation on you, which I am not. I would never mean that, and I misspoke." 

His jaw worked and he swallowed before he said anything else. "Vulnerability is an asset," he said slowly. "I would wish for you that nothing would ever threaten your ability to show it to others of your choosing."

Marian couldn't move. Neither could Anders, it seemed; he was frozen as still as she was.

"I did not have a good . . . Well. I did not have a childhood at all, and what I remember before my eighteenth birthday had colored my ability to trust my instincts so darkly that it took me nearly a decade to figure out the difference between someone I could trust and someone I could not."

Merrill reached out as it to touch him but thought better of it and pulled her hand back. Fenris, in a gesture that surprised Marian (although maybe it shouldn't have), held out both of his hands for Merrill, and she put her hands into his.

"There are many situations where if someone is determined to mug you or hurt you, then the harm they inflict is not your fault, and the best you can do is heal from it and move on. But there are some liminal situations in which listening to your instincts and, perhaps, a well-placed kick may help. That, and knowing you can do it can be empowering. If this is still something you want to do, I am more than happy to help you with it, but if it is not, I will never tell you that you have to learn this." Fenris's voice had grown very quiet by the end, but Marian heard every word.

She didn't think she'd ever be able to forget his words, how he looked, the feel and space of this moment.

She didn't know all the details of the awful things that Danarius had done to Fenris as a child and adolescent, but Garrett did. He'd been there for some of Fenris's depositions and testimony, when the criminal and civil cases went forward after he'd found the strength to press them. Garrett told Marian straight up that there were some things that she simply didn't need to know because she didn't need to be haunted by them as well. But the basic facts, that Fenris had been physically abused, emotionally abused, treated as a slave, sexually assaulted, and magically--harmed, Marian didn't know what word to use for it, but whatever Danarius had done such that Fenris had alchemy in and above his skin that he had no way to access, which were apparently still not fully healed--that she knew.

That, she thought she'd knew. That, she thought she'd taken into account.

She would not, she didn't think at that moment, have changed any of her actions. Maybe after some thought she might decide that she could have done something differently.

But this Fenris, being deliberately vulnerable in front of Merrill--and, not incidentally, in front of Anders and Marian herself--this was not something to take lightly. She would hold the weight of it, the weight of his words, in her heart.

"I don't expect you to say yes," Merrill said, her voice shaking, "but I would like to say that I want to give you a hug right now." She looked down, and a pair of tears slid down her cheeks.

Fenris leaned forward and gently touched his forehead to hers. "When we are done," he said.

He probably wouldn't let Marian hug him, too, but she could dream.

***

Garrett couldn't get a hold of his sister, his best friend, or his theoretical fiance, so he did the next best thing: He called his dad. "Hey, how's it going?"

"Garrett! I was going to call you this evening."

Uh-oh. "Is something wrong? You don't sound ecstatic to hear from me, your son and heir."

"Heir apparent. You're not my heir until I'm dead and you're not my sole heir anyway."

There were issues with having a father who was a lawyer. "Good to know, Dad. What's up?"

"I got a phone call from Meredith."

That took the wind out of Garrett's sails, even though there hadn't been much in the first place. "What's the issue?"

"She's told me that if Anders does not voluntarily deport himself in one week, ICE will issue a warrant."

Garrett sucked in a breath, loud enough to whoosh across the plastic of his phone on his end. "Dad--"

"I've got a call in to make sure it's true. I don't know who in the mundane authorities she's got wrapped around her figure, but she's not supposed to have this sort of power, son."

He knew; it was part of the accords, he supposed they were called. The mundane authorities took care of mundane things and the Watchmen took care of the magical things. The mundane authorities only called in the Watchmen when something went beyond their power--that was Aveline's job, a liaison between the two, and Carver and his boss, Cullen, were on the squad that handled them. But if someone magical committed a mundane crime, like, say, shot someone with a gun, then the mundane authorities handled it unless the magic-user was a flight risk because of the magic. Anders, who hadn't committed any crimes on American soil, as far as Garrett knew . . . well, now he was starting to worry, but that was immaterial. Meredith wanted to get rid of Anders for some reason and she was using the mundane authorities to do that, without Anders having committed any sort of magical _or_ mundane crime.

Garrett's family, and a lot of the other families in the city, powerful or not, had long since maintained that all they needed was the liaison and the squad, at least in New York; other towns and areas could probably get by with just a liaison _on_ the local police force. There didn't need to be an entirely separate force--Guild--with an absurd amount of political power. The Watchmen's Guild, of course, maintained that they needed to be their own independent investigative force, complete with ability to impose punishments.

(There were a few magical folk who did prefer to have the Watchmen's Guild, Fenris somewhat included, but that was largely because they preferred not to break the illusion that no mundane folks knew anything about magic. It was obviously not true, with Varric being an example. Magical and non-magical families intermarried; magical children were born to non-magical families. Everyone would know, eventually. Hell, the Bardic Guild dissolved a couple hundred years ago because Bardic gifts, other than the gold lines of Bardic Sight, were so common in the general population that there was no real differentiation between a magical Bard and one who was a member of the mundane population. But Garrett digressed.)

Maker, he really needed to talk to Anders. "What does she have against him?"

"I don't know, Garrett. I think we need to talk to Anders again."

"I'd just been thinking that. I don't know where he is at the moment. He left a note saying he was out with Marian, but she isn't answering her phone either."

"Well, Marian's fairly reliable. She'll answer as soon as she can, I'm sure."

"Is there anything we can do? Would, like, moving up the wedding help?"

"No, I'm afraid," Malcolm said. "If we did, it would probably be taken as a confirmation that you were, in fact, attempting to help him avoid immigration troubles. I do need to call Orsino and Wynne and Debra and discuss the situation. It's possible . . ." He sighed. "It's possible that this will all end without the two of you needing to get married, although I suppose you could still marry if you discover that you actually want to."

"I don't see that happening," Garrett said.

"Why not? The two of you looked quite cozy in my office."

It was Garrett's turn to heave a sigh. "We had a fight. It was about money."

"Ahh," his father said. "That's always a fun fight."

Something in his voice prompted Garrett to ask, "Did you have that fight with Mother?"

"Time and again," Malcolm said. "We fought about money two days ago. She wanted to tell you that we were paying for your wedding, and I told her that you had more than enough of your own money to pay for whatever you wanted in the way of a ceremony or reception."

"Yeah, but, like . . . you didn't grow up wealthy." His father's family had been dirt-poor by Amell standards but middle-class enough--and Malcolm smart and talented enough--to spring for a private school education, albeit not Etonian and albeit aided by scholarships.

"No, but I was around enough wealthy people to understand how the mindset worked. I have spent some time convincing Leandra of a good deal of truths about money that she did not know. You'll have to work that out with Anders himself, I'm afraid. Although as a doctor he undoubtedly came into contact with a number of wealthy fellow students. There's probably something else there."

"Yeah, I know. Wait, can we go back to the part about a ceremony and reception?"

"I figured you and Anders would want only family and the closest of friends there and that we would end up at a restaurant afterward."

"That seems about right," Garrett said. Ideal, really.

"Your mother had figured that a hundred people was a good size for a small wedding in four weeks."

"Oh, Maker."

"You're welcome."

"Thanks, Dad. I love you."

"I love you too, Garrett. When you get a hold of Anders, can you do a conference call with me? I'll be up fairly late."

"Yeah, we can do that, unless he gets back after midnight or something. I'll text you."

"Sure." They said their goodbyes and hung up, and Garrett sent another text to Marian. He'd already texted Anders twice, and that was his limit. At least, right now.

So he did the only other sensible thing to do, which was to take Barkspawn for a walk. It was dark, or almost dark, and he had to take a flashlight with him, but having a giant fuck-off mutt of indeterminate parentage, other than mastiff, was usually a fairly good deterrent to anyone who might want to mess with him. Well, and also being six-foot-five and proportionately broad. And male. And bearded.

Really, he was pretty damn privileged, and he knew it. He _did_ know it, and he didn't try to rub it in other people's faces, although sometimes he did, apparently.

He really wanted to talk to Anders.

His phone buzzed when he was about five minutes from his house, and he stopped the dog to check to see if it was Marian. 

It was. _yes im with anders hes on his way home but it's been a rough evening so be nice kk?_

_What happened?_

_long story ask him. no one is hurt._

That wasn't actually terribly reassuring. _Ok. You okay?_

_ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ill be ok._

_OK. I love you. Call me if you want me to come over or talk or whatever._

_m not fonna fuckin call u ass ill text but no u need to talk to anders_

_also luv u 2 u big fkn puppy_

He sent her a picture of Barkspawn's face with his tongue hanging out and got an _XD_ in response.

***

Anders dragged himself home after what had been a surprisingly draining session of sitting on the floor and watching other people talk and then punch things. He had to be facetious, even in his own mind, because if not, he'd think too hard about what he now knew, sort of, about Fenris and, well.

A large portion of him _was_ strongly rethinking everything he knew about magical law enforcement and its usefulness, to be quite honest. He was aware that he had the views that he had for a particular set of reasons, but he was shaken by what Fenris had said.

Marian had shook her head when he'd asked her, quite gently, if there was anything else she thought he needed to know. "If you have any questions, you ought to ask Garrett," she'd said.

He wasn't sure what he would even ask. He did pull Marian in for a long hug before he left and walked to the subway, and she'd clung to him and given him a quick kiss before he left. "I see why you love him," he'd said to her, which was perhaps the wrong thing to say since he wasn't sure Marian was aware how deeply she loved Fenris, but she'd just nodded.

Anders walked in the door and almost immediately ran into Garrett. "Oof," he said, and Barkspawn woofed in sympathy.

"Anders," he said. "Are you okay?"

"A little wrung out," he admitted. "Did Marian tell you what happened?"

Garrett shook his head. "No, but she said you'd had a rough evening."

"We were watching Fenris teach Merrill self-defense," Anders said, having no other real way to put it.

"Oh, shit," Garrett said with feeling. "What did he--what did he tell her?"

"No real details, but, Maker's breath, Garrett, he was just--" Anders sat down heavily on the couch. Barkspawn came and laid his head on Anders's knee, and he obeyed the request and gave him ear scritches. "Devastatingly honest."

"Ahh," Garrett said. He sat a respectful distance away from Anders, angled to face him, on the other couch. "I--he did say I could tell you anything you need to know. Do you have any questions?"

"Could you give me the outline of what happened?" Anders said.

"There was an alchemist," Garrett said, and went on to tell him the barest bones of a story: an orphaned child, magical experiments, abuse of all kinds. "He got out, and the organization that helped him get out helped him get a high school diploma and, two years later, he got into Cornell with me. He's really quite brilliant," he added as an aside. "But he wasn't . . . it took another two years after that and a lot of time spent with my father before he was in good enough shape to consider going after the alchemist for any sort of legal recourse."

"Did he?" Anders asked.

"Yes," Garrett said. "I was there for a lot of the questions. It was worse than you can even imagine." He looked down at his hands. "But they nailed him to the wall, both criminally and civilly, and he committed suicide before he went to jail."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," Anders said. "I'm even sorrier he did, but he's not here for me to say that to him." He had tried to give Fenris a respectful nod at the end, but he wasn't sure how it had come across.

"He's stable now, you know, but . . ." Garrett spread his hands. "Now, I suppose, you know why he's got the views that he did. He'll never forgive the Alchemists' Guild for not noticing that his abuser was doing what he did for fourteen years, and the idea of removing the second layer of oversight terrifies him. Even though, it should be pointed out, the Watchmen didn't notice either."

Anders nodded. "I get it. Sort of. Not in the way that you do, or he does, but I do. But Marian--she was at least as shaken as I am, and I presume she knew all this already?"

"Some more detail than I told you, but not all of it. It may have just been how he said it, not what he said."

"Hmm," Anders said noncommittally. It occurred to him as he'd spoken that perhaps a significant part of Marian's discomfiting was due to her recent, ah, escapades with Fenris, but also that Garrett didn't know that and that Anders shouldn't go down this path too far.

Unless Fenris had told Garrett? That seemed unlikely, given that he was supposedly pretending that the situation hadn't happened.

"Oh," Garrett said suddenly. "My father called."

"Did something happen?"

"That's one way to put it," he said. "There's been a . . . Aunty Em called him." Garrett paused and sighed, which made Anders even more worried. 

"What did she say?" Anders had the feeling that Garrett was trying to decide between ripping off the bandage and being delicate. "You might as well come out and say it."

"If you haven't voluntarily deported yourself--that is, left the country--in a week, ICE will issue a warrant for your arrest."

It was good that he was already sitting down, because Anders's head grew light and he wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't going to pass out. "Oh," he heard himself saying, as if from a great distance. "I . . . are we getting married this week, then?"

Garrett shook his head. "No, Dad says it won't help."

"So I should get packing, I suppose."

"Not yet," Garrett said, tone grim. "We need to call Dad and chat with him, but he's still gathering information. We haven't given up yet, Anders."

"I do like the way you say my name," Anders said, and then he clapped a hand over his mouth. "Sorry, that was irrelevant."

"Good to know, though," Garrett said, almost managing to crack a smile. "Are you up to talking to Dad right now? I can tell him that we need to wait until tomorrow."

"No, I have to work tomorrow and so do you," Anders said. "Just . . . give me a moment. And maybe a bottle of smelling salts?"

"Coffee? With a shot of booze in it?"

"Hold the coffee, and it sounds great," Anders said.

He was still nursing a rocks glass with a small amount of Scotch left in it when Garrett called his dad, put it on speakerphone, and set the phone in the middle of the table. "Hi, Dad, it's both of us."

"Hi, Anders, Garrett. Anders, I suppose Garrett has given you the basics of the situation?" Malcolm Hawke sounded as grim as his son had earlier.

"I have to leave inside a week or I'm going to be arrested and deported," Anders said.

"Close enough," Malcolm said. "I have a call into some of my friends who work at various agencies, and I've been on three different conference calls with the heads of the Guilds in the City. You've got support, Anders."

"Me?"

"Well, not you in specific," Malcolm said, "but you as in 'not Meredith.' She's gone past her mandate a hundred K or more, and we're trying to figure out what to do about it. Wynne, in particular, is incensed."

She was the head of the Healers' Guild and Anders had met her all of once. He still hadn’t rejoined the Guild since he’d quit it in London, but he would take support in any place where he could get it.

"So what do we do?" Garrett asked.

"Nothing, at this point. Get a good night's sleep, go about your daily business."

"Sleep, sure," Anders said, midway between bewildered and bitter.

"And keep doing what you're doing, relationship-wise. If the mundane authorities end up being the final arbiter, we'll need as much ammunition as we can get."

"Dad! That's not what you said earlier."

Malcolm laughed. "Well, I hardly thought you needed to be told that. Anyway, Anders, if you can avoid going anywhere other than work alone, that would be helpful."

"I'll try," Anders said.

They hung up, and Anders stared off into the middle distance for a few minutes.

"Anders," Garrett said, and really, that was cheating a little. "We've got a couple other things to discuss, but I don't think tonight is the night for it."

"Oh." Anders looked up. "Yes, if we could perhaps put those off?" He stood, using the back of the couch to stabilize himself, and headed for the spare bedroom. His head felt like it was filled with cotton; even the alcohol hadn't grounded him. "I've got to be up in only a few hours."

"Are you going to be--"

"I'll be fine. I'm just tired."

The last thing he saw before he closed the door was Garrett's worried face, and it haunted him in his dreams.

***

Fenris almost asked Anders to walk Marian home, because she was clearly upset and wouldn't be paying as much attention to her surroundings as she would want. But Anders needed to get home; he heard Marian tell him to ask Garrett if he had any questions. All things considered, there were about five conversations that Anders and Garrett needed to have, and it would be a bad idea to impede any of them.

So that left him walking both Merrill, who was surprisingly in better shape than Marian, and Marian herself home. He had them wait for him to go find shoes suitable to wear outdoors and a jacket. Merrill came up with him to use his bathroom, but Marian elected to remain downstairs and walk Anders to the door.

She was waiting for both of them when they came outside. Merrill was quiet but contemplative; she'd given him the hug he'd promised she could while they were upstairs, and she'd thanked him again. "That can't have been easy for you."

"It was not," he said quietly, "but if I can prevent anything--"

She'd stopped him with a raised hand. "If it's not my fault, it's certainly not your fault," she said, and he acknowledged her point with a nod.

Now, walking towards Merrill's apartment, not twenty minutes away, he let the silence remain silence. Marian, three inches taller than he was, walked on his left, and Merrill, more than half a foot shorter, walked on his right, and he was somehow content, despite the fact that he felt like he'd pulled off his own skin.

Merrill clasped his hands briefly when they reached her place, and she hugged Marian. "Thank you again," she said, quite politely, and wished them both a good night before disappearing into the building.

If only he'd been able to bend the laws of physics to make it such that walking Marian home first had been possible. Alas, he could not, which left him with a ten-minute subway ride and another twenty minutes of walking to get to Marian's building.

He wasn't, per se, afraid that she'd say something. Marian _would_ say something, and there was at least a fifty percent chance that he would be annoyed by what she had said. He wasn't entirely sure what he _was_ afraid of, but his fear instincts, his old demons, were rising and telling him that Marian was something to fear.

 _Down,_ he told them. Whatever she might say, she was no threat to him. To his heart, undoubtedly, but that train had long since left the station.

She was uncharacteristically silent for the entire walk, not even questioning why he was still with her. Normally silence was relaxing, and it had been when Merrill was with them, but every step where Marian was not making some sort of comment grated on his nerves just a little more.

By they got to her apartment, just where they'd kissed two nights ago, he felt abraded and raw, and he didn't know what was going to happen. They stopped as one and turned, staring at each other.

"Are you going to be okay?" Marian said into the silence.

"I'm going to go home, take half a Xanax, and hopefully fall asleep quickly," Fenris said bluntly. Possibly some painkillers as well, but he didn't mention those. He never had. His emotional pain, and its weird transmutation into physical pain, was his and his alone.

Marian nodded. "Can I give you a hug?"

He did her the courtesy of considering the matter, but no, he was too raw for that much contact. "No," he said, adding "not right now" to soften his words in a way he didn't usually around her.

Marian nodded. "Thank you for being willing to do this."

Fenris held out his hands, as he'd done for Merrill earlier; he thought he could stand that much. She took them in hers; her fingers were cold, despite the mild weather, but before they'd been in his hands long enough to warm them up, a spark of her magic left her fingers and sparked against the alchemical web in his flesh.

It felt like a match being struck on his bare skin, and he jumped, dropping her hands. "Control yourself," he snapped.

"Oh, my God, I'm sorry," Marian said, taking her own step back.

"Keep your--magic--to yourself," he said, spitting out the hated word.

"I didn't fucking do it on purpose!" she yelled back, but she looked horrified, rather than angry.

"Do you think that somehow makes it better?"

"I haven't done that in years!"

"Again, _do you think that somehow makes it better?_ " He turned and left her standing there on the sidewalk.

His anger at Marian drained away five steps down the sidewalk, leaving him as empty as his life would be without her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry? I promise it's a HEA.
> 
> (Why is Merrill now from northern Minnesota? I needed her to be a US citizen, because otherwise it was irksome to the plot, and she needed to be from somewhere where she'd be sheltered and have a noticeable non-Southern accent. Also, I live in Minnesota.)


	10. ~in which someone is punched~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric's in trouble. So is Merrill, but that one's easier to fix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, there are notes [on Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/181664333343/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-10).

Garrett woke up briefly when he heard Anders get in the shower; it was five-something in the morning, and he considered getting up to make breakfast for him, but he couldn't quite manage. He did get up long enough to start coffee, only to fall asleep on the table. Anders woke him up a few minutes later, neatly dressed in clean scrubs, his wet hair pulled back into a half-ponytail. "Go back to bed, Garrett," he said gently, and Garrett nodded and managed to lever himself out of the chair and over to a couch.

Of course, he ended up getting up late and got to work about half an hour later than he usually preferred. It was doubly annoying, because he'd wanted to catch Fenris at some point, and now he was possibly going to have to work through his lunch. He texted Fenris anyway, and at that point he felt more than a little bad because he hadn't remembered to text Fenris last night. _Are you doing better today?_

 _Indeed,_ came the reply. _Although it required half a Xanax last night._

Garrett winced. _I'm sorry you had to do that. Are you going to continue teaching Merrill?_

_Yes. It'll be quite a bit easier after this first week. I should be fine._

_If you don't turn out to be fine . . ._

_I will ask for help. I've learned a thing or two over the years, Garrett._

_I know. But I still worry._

_And for that I am grateful._

_I can't meet you for lunch, I got here too late. Do you want to do dinner after work?_

_I'd like that. French Meadow?_

_Six, see you there._

That satisfied that particular anxiety. He was completely aware that he was somewhat behind on his work, but he took a moment to shoot off a text to Anders-- _Hope you're doing okay today._ \--and another to his sister. _Hey, you good?_

He didn't wait for responses on those, as much as he cared for both of them. Well. Obviously he cared more for his sister, but . . . he really couldn't deny that he did care for Anders. He was loath to admit it, but if Anders had to leave the country, Garrett wasn't a hundred percent sure he wouldn't find himself following him. It might not be permanently, but if Anders ended up moving to England or back to Norway, well. Garrett could stand a couple years there, couldn't he?

No. That was ridiculous. He'd known the man for a week and a half.

Instead he buried his face in work. Fortunately, he actually enjoyed his job, and when the end of the day came around, he was satisfied with how much he'd done. When he finally checked his messages at the end of the day, there was one from Marian telling him to fuck off, which he couldn't tell if it meant she was just fine or that something had gone wrong, and another from Anders saying he was all right but tired.

_You might beat me home. I'm going for dinner with Fenris._

_If I do, I might just fall asleep. I'm sorry. You can wake me up if something happened._

Like hell would Garrett do that, but close enough. _There's some leftover chicken in the fridge, I think._

_Thanks._

They were being very civil with each other. It was almost nice, but not quite. Garrett turned off his computer, shoved his phone in his pocket, and headed to the restaurant for dinner.

Fenris had beat him there by a few minutes, it seemed; he'd claimed a booth and was staring at a menu. There was a glass of water at each place setting but a glass of beer at Garrett's, and he was momentarily confused. "You got me a beer?"

"Yes," Fenris said simply.

"I'm not gonna say no," Garrett said, when it seemed Fenris wasn't going to add to that. He slurped down a mouthful of foam and then glanced at the menu to see if what he wanted was still on the menu. It was, so he looked back at Fenris. "So. You okay?"

Fenris's mouth tightened. "Last night, I walked your sister home. She asked if she could give me a hug, which, given what came before, was not unexpected, but I couldn't say yes. I held her hands in mine, instead, but she did not have enough control and a bit of her magic sparked against my . . . scars."

"Oh," Garrett said. "I'm guessing you didn't react well." Among the Hawkes, it was only a problem with Marian; Garrett, being only talented in Alchemy, didn't have any free-floating magic to worry about. Bethany was a Healer like Anders, although she could See as well, and it would take contact and an act of will for her Healing to try to work on Fenris. Neither ever happened. Carver could See and that was about it. Malcolm and Leandra simply had legendary control. Marian was the only member of the family with straight-up Mage talent--she also had some Healing and Alchemy--which meant that she was the only one whose talent might try to work with Fenris. It had happened a few times before, but not in years.

"No. We fought." Fenris seemed to think very hard about something again and he had opened his mouth to speak when the server got there and took their orders. After she left, he took another moment and then said, "I'm sorry to put this so baldly, but I can't think of any other way to get through this. I slept with your sister Sunday night."

Garrett sat back in his seat. Well. That wasn't anything that he'd expected. He took a sip of beer--carefully, in case Fenris had any other revelations that he wanted to make--and then set the glass back down on its coaster. "Marian. You slept with Marian."

"Well, I'm hardly likely to sleep with Bethany," Fenris snapped.

"That wasn't my point," Garrett said gently. "You slept with Marian, who is an adult who is allowed to make her own decisions about who she'd like to sleep with. She happens to be my sister, sure, but I'm certainly not mad. Unless it went badly?" He held up a hand. "I mean, I don't want details, but . . ."

"It did not go badly," Fenris said. "Until afterward, when I left her in the dark of the night."

"Why did you leave?"

"I simply couldn't stay." Fenris looked at his glass of water and then picked it up for a sip. "Your family has done so much for me that I couldn't believe I'd betrayed your trust."

"Well, that's a very antiquated point of view. How was sleeping with Marian betraying our trust?"

Fenris looked back up at Garrett, brows furrowed. "Have you seen Marian and me in the same place at the same time? We are oil and water, or a powderkeg and a spark."

"You fight, sure, but you're both passionate people. Plus, I think both of you enjoy the fighting on some level. But sure, let's say you aren't in fact going to sleep with Marian again. She's fine with one-night stands. You've had a few." Really, what was Garrett's life, that he was trying to talk his best friend into being okay with having hooked up with his sister? "You're both adults. Just . . . adult."

Fenris chuckled. "I will try. But in any case, I think that made what happened last night worse."

"The sparking thing, or . . .?"

"That, but the . . . discussion beforehand."

"Mmm," Garrett said. “Do you need my help to fix it?"

"How well do you know Merrill? Would you be able to sit in on the next lesson, if she wants someone there?"

"You're going to avoid Marian."

"I am absolutely going to avoid Marian, at least until both of our tempers have simmered down."

"That's probably best," Garrett admitted.

"And then I will apologize for snapping at her. And then . . ." He sighed. "We shall see."

"Hey," Garrett said. "You can't get rid of me this easily."

"I didn't think I could," Fenris said, but he looked pleased.

Their food came a few minutes later, and Garrett was enjoying his sandwich when his phone buzzed in his pocket. It probably wasn't important, so he ignored it, but when three more buzzes came in short order, and when one went to Fenris's phone, he pulled his phone out and looked at it.

_Garrett, where are you? Varric's been arrested._

That was Marian. If the words hadn’t told him that something was incredibly wrong, her texting style would have. The subsequent texts were, _Check your phone._ three times. He texted back, _French Meadow. What do you need?_

To Fenris he said, "I've got to go. Varric's been arrested."

"I got that text as well."

_Dad's coming to get you. He'll be there in about 10 mins._

_OK. I'll be outside. Bring Fen or no?_

_Up to him._

"Marian says if you want to come to the police station, you can come as well. Dad's coming to pick me up."

Fenris inhaled and exhaled slowly. "I think I'll decline," he said. "I'm not sure what good I would do there. Do call me if there's anything I can help with."

"I will. Can you cover payment, then? I'll send you money."

"Don't worry about it," Fenris said.

Garrett wolfed down the rest of his sandwich and chips, slugged the beer, and then clapped Fenris on the shoulder as he went to stand outside and wait for his dad.

***

Marian was still mad at Fenris when she woke up the next morning, even though the logical part of her brain knew that it had just been bad timing. She'd had frayed control, he'd been overloaded, everything had been emotional and awful. But he still didn't have to _yell_ at her like that. Even if he was in constant pain and she’d made it worse. Ugh.

She went to work sometime after the lunch shift, which was still hours before she was actually supposed to be there, but she needed to leave her apartment and do something. The taps probably needed scrubbing, she reasoned.

It was after five and just at the beginning of the dinner rush before she realized that she hadn't seen Varric. Hell, she hadn't seen him Monday, either, and obviously not Sunday, so it had been almost four days. She sent him a text.

He didn't respond, which was odd. Usually he was more than happy for a distraction from writing or revision or whatever else he was doing, but then Marian got busy again and forgot for a half hour or so. The next time she had time to breathe, she checked her phone again--still nothing. 

"Hey, Bela, have you seen Varric recently?"

Bela paused. "Not since Saturday, maybe?"

"Me neither. I texted him and got nothing."

"Maybe he's on a hot writing streak?"

Marian stared at Isabela.

"Probably not. Is there anyone else you can text to check up on him?"

"Not that I can think of," she said.

No one had seen Varric since Saturday, either, not Orana or Norah or Merrill or, when she texted a couple of the other servers, anyone else who worked at the Hanged Man. This was getting strange, honestly, and Marian was starting to worry. She texted Anders to ask if Varric had shown up in his hospital, and he confirmed that Varric hadn't. He said he'd see if he could find out about other hospitals, but he didn't think that was something they could do.

Finally she texted her brother. Not Garrett, the other one.

_Can you check to see if someone's been arrested?_

_Call fuckin 311 like everyone else,_ came the answer, and Marian excused herself for a moment to check.

He was. He was being held at one of the Manhattan police stations--not the one that Carver or Aveline worked out of--and his date for arraignment was not yet in the system. Marian frowned. She wasn't a lawyer or a police officer and she tended to turn off her brain when her father and Carver talked about their jobs, but that didn't seem right. She hung up and called her dad.

"Hey, Dad, Varric's been arrested and there's no arraignment date in the system? Is that right?"

"No," Malcolm said. "What's Varric's last name, again? Let me see what's going on."

She spelled 'Tethras' for him and hung up to await his response. The bar didn't really need her tonight; it was a Wednesday and while they would certainly enjoy having her around to tend bar and wait tables, they were slightly overstaffed at the moment. She found Bela and Norah and told them, "I might have to leave. Family issue."

"We'll be fine," Norah said, and Isabela agreed.

In between pouring cheap beer for early drunks, she texted Aveline to see if she knew anything--no, but she'd look--and waited for something from her dad.

Malcolm called back just before seven. "It's Meredith," he said. "I don't know how or why, but I'm now Varric's attorney and we can go talk to him. Where's Garrett?"

"I don't know. Text him?"

"You text him. I'm jumping in the car. Fortunately I drove to work today."

Marian wasn't entirely sure why he even wanted Garrett there, but she wasn't going to say no to an extra six and a half feet of muscle. "I'll jump in a cab or something and meet you there."

She finally got a hold of Garrett and texted his location to her dad while she was in the back of an Uber; ten minutes later she was outside the police station.

She did not want to go in. Regardless of the fact that she was a white woman from a wealthy family, police stations still unsettled her, especially given the bullshit that Meredith was engaging in at the moment. But Varric was in there, and there was some other bullshit going on with that, so she'd go in.

Her father hadn't explicitly said it, but she was there because she was the only one in the family who could cast the notice-me-not veils. Hopefully they'd be able to talk to Varric without anyone overhearing without them, but if not, she could probably be helpful.

"Marian?"

She turned at the sound of her name. It wasn't her father or Garrett; it was, of all people, Carver's boss, Cullen Rutherford. He was classically handsome, tall and broad-shouldered, and would have probably been right up Marian's alley except for the _massive stick up his ass._ And not in the fun way. "Hi, Cullen."

"What are you doing here?" he asked. His hair was coppery blond and curled tightly; he really wasn't sure what to do with the curl most days, despite being almost Marian's age, and today it was plastered down with gel and looked a little like he had dry ramen noodles stuck to his head. It sort of ruined some of the attraction.

"Meeting my father."

"Oh," he said, but he still looked confused. 

He was going to start asking questions and whatever bad things she had to say about him, she had no complaint about his intellect, so she thought as quickly as she could.

"How's Carver doing at work? I mean, you know him, he isn't going to tell us anything either way."

"He's quite skilled, actually," Cullen said. "Some of the academy graduates seem to forget everything they've ever been told when they get out onto the streets, but he manages to keep a level head and remember things. We need more officers like him. However, you're attempting to distract me. What's going on?"

Marian sighed. "I can't just yell, 'Fire!' and have you run in the other direction?"

"You don't have to tell me," he said, "but perhaps I can help?"

She really didn't think he could, but . . . "Our friend Varric's been arrested and the system is being a little unclear on his arraignment date. My dad's coming here to try to clear it up."

Cullen frowned. "That can't be right. Come in with me."

"You don't work here, though."

"No," he said, "but Aveline called me and told me to come here a half hour ago to find you and help. There are spare offices here for people from other precincts doing research. Come on."

Marian did follow him; he was a stick in the mud but nothing if not trustworthy. They got inside, Marian having to show ID and go through a metal detector or four, and then they were in a small office with a computer. "Sit there," Cullen said, pointing to a chair, not unkindly. "Just give me a moment here . . ."

Marian used the time that he needed to get the computer up and running to tell Garrett where she was; she also texted Aveline. _did u tell cullen to come help?_

_Yes, why?_

_hes being useful it's p nice_

_Marian, Cullen's a perfectly nice young man. Which is probably why you don't have much use for him, isn’t it._

_no comment_

"Well." Cullen sat back in his chair. "There must be a mistake."

"Yeah?" Marian said, unable to keep the sarcasm from her tone.

Thankfully, he ignored it. "Mr. Tethras is in the building, but there's some sort of hold on him that I don't have the authority to see the reasoning behind. I might be able to talk to someone about that."

"Wait," Marian said, before he could stand and actually see about talking to another human. "Can you just make sure that we can see him? Then you can talk to someone about when he'll get out of there."

"All right," Cullen said.

"Also--what was he arrested for?" It occurred to her that she didn't know that, either.

That caused him to frown, twin lines appearing between his brows. "It's also locked from me. That can't be right."

"You can't just hold someone for no reason," she said.

"Well, we can, but only for about forty-eight hours," Cullen said. "Mr. Tethras has been here for almost ninety-six hours. He was arrested late Saturday. Really, he should have seen a judge first thing Monday morning, but he didn't, for some reason. I should go find out--"

"No, please," Marian said. "I think it would be better if we managed to talk to him first. Please." She wouldn't have been above using some sort of magical manipulation on him, even though he could have seen her doing it, but fortunately the sincerity in her voice convinced him without that.

"I'll hold off," he said.

Her phone buzzed. "I think my dad's here," she said, checking the message, and she'd guessed correctly. "Can you come with me to go find him?"

"Absolutely."

There was something appealing about his steadfastness, she supposed, or at least it was useful. But she preferred her men a little shorter and a lot more surly.

Not that she was thinking about that right now. There were better things to do.

Malcolm and Garrett were standing outside when they got there. "Cullen," her father said. He seemed to like Carver's boss uncomplicatedly, which was a little odd. "It's good to see you, but what are you doing here?"

"Aveline asked me to help. Hello, Garrett." They shook hands, forearms bulging in that way that meant they were testing each other's strength for no good reason. (Garrett would win that one, as he had a few inches and a lot of pounds on Cullen, plus a couple years. But Marian digressed.)

"Cullen,” Garrett said with a nod. “Let's go inside."

When they got back to the office, and only then, Marian and Cullen told them what Cullen had found. "Do you know anything, Dad?"

"Nothing useful," he said. "I've got a judge who's willing to come in this evening, so we can hopefully get Varric arraigned and out of here."

"Really?" Cullen asked.

"Judge Stroud," Malcolm said.

"Ah."

Stroud was one of them, so to speak; his alchemical ability wasn't great but he'd grown up in an alchemical family. No wonder Malcolm had called him.

"Let's go see Varric, then," Garrett said.

Surprisingly--or, more likely, due to Cullen's presence--there were no difficulties in getting to see Varric, at least for Malcolm. He claimed Marian as his assistant, and Cullen politely didn't disagree, but he didn't even try to pass off Garrett as another assistant or anything. Garrett stayed in a nearby lobby with Cullen, and an officer named Boyle led Marian and her dad deeper into the building. They were brought to a small room where Varric was handcuffed to the table, and Boyle said, "I'll be right outside. Knock on the door when you want to be let out."

"Thank you," Malcolm said, and Marian nodded. 

Once Boyle was gone, Marian quickly cast a hardcore notice-me-not and a bonus record-me-not--not exactly an official spell from the Mages' Guild, but something she'd found useful over the years--without making more than a single gesture that she hid in scratching an ear. Switching over to Sight, she looked around the room. "We're safe," she said, content that her spells covered the whole room and all the recording devices in it.

"Cullen's going to know you did that," Varric pointed out. "Right? Can't he See?"

He could, but Malcolm waved a hand. "Don't worry about that. You have about five minutes to tell us what we need to know."

"Got it," Varric said. "My brother, Bartrand, owes a shitload of money to Meredith Stannard. He is also owed a shitload of money by certain people high up in ICE." He named a name that Marian didn't recognize but her father certainly did, based on his intake of breath. "So he's doing a trade: he's getting ICE and, by extension, the NYPD to do Meredith's dirty work."

"What's her end goal?" Malcolm asked.

"I don't know exactly," Varric said, "but I strongly suspect that deporting as many magic folk as she can is part of it."

"Well, shit," Marian said.

"Yeah," Varric said. "Couldn't have said it better myself."

"Anything else that the police can't hear?" Malcolm asked.

"The charges they have me on are bullshit."

"I assumed that," Malcolm said. "Let's see if we can get you out of here. Marian?"

Marian dropped the spells as naturally as she could, and her father picked up as if they'd been having the conversation. "So you were arrested when?"

While Varric was answering, Marian's phone buzzed. She looked at it, because who would be texting her right now? Merrill. Merrill wasn't texting, she was calling, and she could only be calling because there was an emergency. Marian stood and said, as professionally as she could, "Excuse me, but I have to take this."

Malcolm and Varric both gave her odd looks, but she ignored them and knocked on the door to leave. Officer Boyle let her out with an odd look, but she held up her phone and he nodded. She went a few steps up the hall and called Merrill back. "Hey, Daisy, are you okay?"

"No, I'm--he's here!" Merrill was almost whispering; it sounded like she was in the middle of the bar, but she was speaking quietly into the phone.

"Who's there?"

"The--the man who was following me! He's sitting at the bar!"

"Where are you?" Marian asked, her spine turning into an icicle.

"I'm _behind_ the bar!"

Shit. "Merrill, honey, hang up on me, call Fenris, and probably call 911 when you're done."

"I don't--I don't think the police are--"

"If you're calling me in this much of a panic, you need to call the police. But at least call Fenris."

"I will."

"I'll be there as soon as I can, okay, Daisy? I promise."

"Thank you, Marian--I--"

"Call him."

"Okay. Bye."

They hung up and Marian texted Garrett: _Go to THM, take Cullen._

_What?_

_Merrill's stalker is literally sitting at the bar and she's stuck behind it._

_Motherfucker! Going. You stay here with Dad._

_I can't,_ she sent back. _I promised Merrill I'd be there._

_Text her back, say you're sending me in first. I'm already going. Cullen says he can check out a car._

Marian chewed her lip for half a second. _OK but I'm still coming ASAP._

She texted Merrill that she was sending Garrett first, not mentioning Cullen, and went back to find her father to see how quickly she could leave. The guilt was already eating at her, but she had sent in the entire cavalry, and all she could do was wait.

***

Fenris hemmed and hawed but after Garrett left the restaurant, he simply wasn't ready to go home. The only place he typically went when he didn't want to be home but wasn't going to hit up the dojo was The Hanged Man, and--well, actually, he realized it would probably be perfectly safe to go there tonight. Marian was dealing with the Varric issue, so at the worst, he'd have to deal with questions from Isabela.

He rather thought he could scowl enough to make her go away. Besides, Merrill might be working, and he could say hello to her.

He headed towards the neighborhood where the bar was located and was about five minutes away--it was a bit of a walk, but the weather was nice and he liked the effort--when his phone made a buzz. It couldn't be Garrett, it certainly wasn't Marian, and almost no one else ever texted him. He checked out of curiosity, and then froze for a moment, standing stock-still on the sidewalk.

It was Merrill. _I'm sorry to bother you but the man who was following me is here sitting at the bar and Marian told me to text you?_

 _I'll be there in 2 mins,_ he texted quickly and then shoved the phone in his pocket as he broke out in a run. Dress pants and dress shoes weren't the best for a sprint, but he made do and got to the bar fairly quickly. But before he went in, he wiped a hand over his face and attempted to look like he hadn't just been sprinting the last few blocks.

He got inside and didn't immediately see the man whom he'd seen in the library, but a moment later, he spied him at the far side of the room. The pass-through from behind the bar was right next to him, effectively pinning Merrill behind the bar. The only thing past him was the door to the kitchen.

Merrill was standing as far away from him as she could get, talking with the blond man and redheaded woman who had been trying to leave a note for Isabela a few days ago. She looked animated, but Fenris could see how her hands were wrapped around a pint glass, probably to hide the shaking. He went over, behind the couple, and placed his hands on their shoulders. "Hello, friends," he said, and quietly, but with an edge of steel, added, "Play along."

"Ah! My handsome friend," the blond man said, kissing Fenris on the cheek. "It is so good to see you."

Fenris managed not to wince through sheer force of will.

"Fenris," Merrill said. "Oh, thank you for coming." She grinned at him with her customer service face on, and he leaned over the bar to kiss her on the cheek.

"We'll get him out of here," he breathed, which probably looked like some sort of sweet talk, but she immediately relaxed.

Fenris, of course, did not.

"Well, hello, gorgeous." The redheaded woman leaned over to kiss Fenris on the cheek as well, but she stopped a millimeter from his skin and said, "Merrill's been telling us a little about her stalker over there. We've almost formulated a plan to get him out. I'm Lyna, he's Zev."

He glanced up at Merrill, who gave him the tiniest nod, and leaned over a little and extended an arm to hug Lyna, ignoring the crawl of his skin under her touch. "Tell me."

Zev continued his conversation with Merrill as Lyna, under the guise of some light making out with Fenris, explained their ideas. "He’s sitting where no one can really sneak up on him. If anyone gets close, he’ll know it’s coming. We’d rather no one get arrested for assault. The only thing we could think of was basically to start a bar fight and 'accidentally' knock him out."

"That could work," Fenris said after a moment's contemplation. He certainly couldn’t think of anything better. "Do either of you have a background in some sort of martial art?"

"Zev's a master capoeira instructor," Lyna said. "I've picked up some."

"Close enough," Fenris said and ignored Zev's elbow in his side. "I am probably the best person to knock him out with little damage, unless that's something you particularly know how to do. I've a black belt in jiu-jitsu."

"You can do that, then," Lyna said. "Is there anyone else we can call to help with a bar fight?"

"Garrett should be here in about fifteen minutes," Merrill said, offering Fenris a glass of water with lemon in it.

He took it from her with a smile. "Thanks, Daisy." To Lyna he said, "I don't think we want to wait that long."

"Ahem," someone said from behind them, and Fenris managed to control his jump, but just barely. He turned, as did Zev and Lyna.

Behind them was the man that Marian called The Spook, along with a square-faced blond man in a tank top. His arms were impressively muscled. "We heard you might be trying to start a bar fight," the new blond man said, his voice low but his tone intentionally aggressive. "I'm practically a professional at bar fights." He had some odd purple and white markings around his eyes and hands that Fenris couldn't place, and obviously The Spook could See.

"We need to remove the man with the ridiculous mustache," Fenris said. "He hasn't done anything actionable but he's been stalking Merrill behind the bar."

"Got it," the blond man said. "White-hair, you've got the punch? Blondie, yell at me and try to punch me. We can wing it from there. Phil, you got this?"

"I've got Merrill," The Spook, or obviously Phil, said. "Anyone else we need to warn?"

"I texted the chef and she's told everyone else," Merrill said, leaning onto the bar. "No one else is here yet."

There was a couple in the far corner, but they were far enough to be out of the action. "What did you say?" Fenris said, low and menacing.

"He said something about your mother," Zev said helpfully. He sounded playful but also with an edge of menace, an impressive combination.

"I didn't say jack shit about your mother," the blond man said. "I said something about your sister."

"You keep his sister's name out of your mouth, you fucking asshole!" Lyna shouted.

"Hijo de puta!" Zev said, and aimed a solid punch at the blond man's jaw.

Blond man, in an amazing feat of dexterity, ducked the punch by throwing himself at Fenris. Fenris hadn't been expecting it, but his instincts took over and he tackled the man to the floor.

He hadn't been expecting the blond man to be able to slither out of his grip, but somehow between the two of them they managed to crawl, grapple, and roll their way over to where the stalker was sitting in a remarkably short period of time.

"Hey, what the fuck," the stalker said, and made as if to stand, but the blond man swung himself and Fenris around. Fenris flailed wildly, his movements disguising what was actually a solid uppercut to the stalker's jaw.

Fenris had punched a dozen or so people into unconsciousness by that point. The stalker was not superhuman; he went down with one hit.

The bar fight, such as it was, stopped immediately. The blond man produced a couple sets of handcuffs and put one on the stalker, after checking to make sure he still had a pulse. "Nice job," the blond man said to Fenris, holding out a hand. "I'm Clint."

"Fenris," Fenris said, shaking Clint's hand gingerly, as he'd made the punch with his right hand and his knuckles hurt a little bit. He was also going to have some bruises in the middle of his back and he'd apparently hit Clint hard enough to make his nose start swelling, but they'd both be fine.

Phil the Spook came up to them. "We've got him," he said. "Clint, let's go."

"Wait," Fenris said. "Where's Merrill?"

"In the kitchen, with the redheaded woman and the chef," Phil said. "We're . . . law enforcement. We'll get him out of here and into the hands of the right authorities."

"Which branch?"

"SHIELD," Phil said, holding out an ID that had his name and likeness on it, but representing an agency that Fenris had never heard of. "The man you punched was Bartrand Tethras. We'd like to question him in relation to some goods he's sold recently."

Bartrand . . . Tethras? Varric's brother! "He's a notorious gambler." Had they been here looking for him? It would make sense, given that Varric was here so often.

"We're aware," Phil said grimly. "But we really need to go." Clint was already hauling Bartrand over to the door. Zev was over attempting to charm the couple that had been in the corner, and Lyna and Merrill were just visible inside the door to the kitchen.

"All right," Fenris said. "If I need to get a hold of you?"

"You won't," Phil said, "but I'm not going to stop eating dinner here. I like the food." He smiled, perfectly mild-mannered, and turned on his heel to leave.

Fenris watched him go, still at least three-quarters confused about what had just happened. Oh well. He shook his head. At least Merrill would be safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you read the story I linked in the original author's note, you probably had some idea who the Spook was, and . . . ta-da!


	11. ~in which Cullen continues to be a Nice Young Man~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Truths are revealed, prisoners are released, Garrett gives Anders a foot rub, and Marian almost suffocates in Bela's cleavage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, extra info over [on Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/181867463988/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-11).

Garrett and Cullen rushed into The Hanged Man about five minutes too late. There were only two customers, a redhead and a blond man who were both sitting at the bar. Fenris was holding a bar towel full of ice on the fingers of his right hand and Merrill was clucking over him. Orana was standing in the door to the kitchen, her arms crossed over her chest. "Where is he?" Garrett asked, still heaving breaths.

"Where's who?" Merrill asked with faux innocence.

"Your stalker!"

"He decided to leave," the blond man said. He had some sort of Latinx accent that Garrett couldn't definitively place. "Wasn't that smart of him?"

Cullen looked around, his eyes lingering on the chairs and bar stools that were on the floor and Fenris's injured knuckles, and announced, "Well, clearly nothing happened here. I'll just be on my way. Garrett, have a fine night. Fenris, Merrill, good to see you again."

"Thanks, Cullen," Garrett said. "Sorry about the false alarm."

"I was off-duty anyway," he said. "Say goodbye to Marian for me."

He left, whistling something rendered unintelligible by tunelessness. When the door shut, Garrett said, "Okay, now that the five-oh is gone, what happened?"

“Did he just say ‘five-oh’?” Orana said to no one in particular.

"You aren't going to believe this," Fenris warned and filled him in.

"It was magnificent," the blond man, apparently Zev, said. "Clint was incredibly skilled, in addition to his stunning good looks. It was clear that he is a warrior of some sort, but he was able to look as if he were just a mad drunk. And Phil was clearly hiding muscle under that suit of his. He hauled Merrill over the bar and hustled her into the kitchen before anyone noticed."

"Zev and Lyna were going to help Merrill, but they needed a few more people for their plan to work," Fenris said, as an aside.

"You know Isabela, don't you?" Lyna said.

"Both of us do, yeah," Garrett said.

"Would you put a good word in with her for us?"

"What do you even want from her?" Fenris asked.

"She hasn't told you?" Lyna asked.

"She hasn't even mentioned us?" Zev said.

"No," Fenris said shortly.

"She was our lover," Zev said sadly. "But she left, and she does not want to accept how we feel about her."

"She was Zev's lover a number of years ago," Lyna said. "Both of ours for a single night before she ran. We'd just . . . like to talk to her. As much as we would love it if she was with us again, I just don't want to lose her entirely."

"Mm," Garrett said. "I'll think about it. Does she know how to get a hold of you?"

"She should," Lyna said. " _We_ haven't changed our numbers. I'm sorry. That was catty."

Garrett shrugged. "I'm not making any promises." He wanted to hear Bela's side before he made any decisions, but as far as he could tell, they weren't completely awful humans.

"I'm not asking for any," Lyna returned. "But thank you for anything you _do_ do."

"Anyway, so--wait, first, do we know who the stalker even was? Did you get his name?" Garrett asked.

"Fuck," Fenris said, a rare use of the word, and Garrett looked at him sharply. "He was Bartrand Tethras. I meant to text Marian, but . . .” He held up the ice. “She probably needs to know sooner rather than later."

"Fuck, indeed," Garrett said, and he got out his phone to text her immediately.

 _Well, fuck. I'll tell Varric when we get him out,_ Marian texted in reply.

_Is it happening?_

_Dad's gonna get it through by sheer force of will, I'm pretty sure. Send Cullen back if you don't need him._

_He left. I don't know where he went._ Garrett tried to remember if Cullen had left to the left or the right, but he couldn’t even remember that much.

_Do you have his phone number?_

He checked, but for some reason, he didn’t. _No, try Carver._

_OK_

"Everything all right with Marian?" Fenris asked.

"Other than the fact that she’s texting like an adult, yeah, everything seems like it will be okay."

"Then I'll walk Merrill home," he said. "You were off shift at eight, right?"

Merrill nodded. "We'll probably be closing for the evening."

"Nah, I can bartend," Garrett said. He could; he'd helped out occasionally over the years.

Merrill perked up. "Would you? Orana, would you be okay with that?"

Orana shrugged. "At least until Norah can get back here."

"That works," Garrett said. "Fenris, I'll see you later."

"Thank you so much," Lyna said to Fenris. "Merrill, I'm so sorry that happened to you. I hope you're safe now." She offered Merrill a hug, and Merrill took her up on it.

Zev put a hand on Fenris's shoulder; Garrett winced on Fenris's behalf, but Fenris turned in to face Zev without punching him. "Yes?" Fenris said.

Zev leaned in and whispered something in Fenris's ear, dropping a kiss on his cheekbone as he pulled away. Fenris caught his wrist and squeezed hard enough to make Zev yelp and jump away. "No," he said firmly but politely, at least for him. "And please do not do that again."

"Do not tell me that you are straight," Zev said.

"No, just monogamous," Fenris said. He turned away to hide his blink of surprise but Garrett still caught it.

Interesting.

***

Anders fell asleep on the couch after wolfing down whatever chicken concoction he'd found in a Tupperware, something with rice, possibly Mexican. He didn't wake up again until Garrett got home, and a glance at his phone revealed that it was somewhat after midnight when that happened. "Garrett?"

"Ah, Anders, you're . . . well, you're awake now."

"Is everything all right?"

Garrett picked up Anders's feet and sat down under them, despite the fact that there was a perfectly good second couch available to him. "It was a long, weird evening. I sent you a couple of texts, but I'm guessing you didn't see them because you were asleep."

"Yes, I'm sorry," Anders said.

"No need. I can just tell you the whole story, then."

It took more than a few minutes, and by the end, Anders's eyes were wide. "SHIELD?" he said. "I've never even heard of them. The Spook really was a government agent? Marian was right?"

"Guess so," Garrett said, laughing. "And I gather he was pretty badass, if Zev's overly flowery narration was to be believed."

"I almost wish I would have seen it," Anders said, a little wistfully.

"Oh, me too," Garrett said, "but I'm not sure I would have been able to keep from laughing. Apparently there was a couple there who wasn't part of any of this, and Orana and Merrill ended up comping them a shot of Scotch apiece so they wouldn't call the police. Good Scotch, too."

"You said Cullen was there briefly."

"Yeah, but he didn't see anything, at least partly on purpose," Garrett said. His hands had been resting on Anders's shins, but he started rubbing circles on Anders's ankle. Anders wasn't entirely sure he realized he was doing that, but he wasn't about to stop him.

"So what's going on with Varric, then?"

"I think Dad's actually going to be able to spring him, based on what Marian said. I don't know if it's get-all-charges-dropped springing or just getting him arraigned so he can be released on his own recognizance, but something like that."

"I only understood about two-thirds of what you said," Anders said.

"On his own recognizance means no-money bail," Garrett said. By now he'd picked up one of Anders's feet and started rubbing it, pressing on the sides of his heel in a way that hurt like hell but was wonderful at the same time.

He had to know he was doing it at this point, so Anders didn't stop himself from saying, "Please don't stop."

Garrett chuckled. "Should've asked first, sorry, but I'm glad you're enjoying it."

"I'm really not as touch-averse as either you seem to think I am or as you're used to, given your sister and your best friend," Anders said. "Casual touching like this is, um, nice. Really nice. And I've had ample opportunity to pull away if I wanted to. Which I don’t."

"Yes, but . . ." Garrett blew out through his nose. "I'm trying to be a gentleman."

"I wish you wouldn't."

In some sort of ideal reality, that would have led to a night of athletic, sweaty sex, but this was not that reality. Garrett patted Anders's feet and then moved them so he could stand up and move to the other couch. "Did you know that Marian and Fenris slept together Sunday night?"

It was a sharp change of subject, and Anders shook his head to clear it. "Ah, yes, I did. Marian told me. She needed someone to complain to. You understand why I couldn't tell you."

"Oh, of course. I wasn't saying that you should have," Garrett said. "Fenris told me at dinner. And then later on, when someone asked him if he was straight, his answer was, and I quote, 'No, just monogamous.'"

"Well." Anders let out a low whistle. "That's interesting."

"Isn't it?"

"Let's not tell Marian."

"No. Her head might explode." They grinned at each other in perfect agreement, broken only by near-simultaneous yawns.

"You need sleep," Anders said to Garrett, while Garrett said, "You need more sleep."

"Apparently we have the same plan," Anders said. Every inch of him yearned to ask if he could sleep in Garrett's bed-- _with_ Garrett, mind you--but he'd put himself out there and gotten enough rejection for one evening. He stood and stretched. "Good night, Garrett."

"Good night, Anders. We’ll talk soon." Garrett didn't stand, but he did hold out a hand as Anders walked by, and Anders brushed his palm against it. It wasn't a good-night kiss, but it would do.

Sort of. Not really.

***

Marian and her father left the police precinct at two in the morning, but they had Varric with them, free and clear for a few weeks, at least. There was still the matter of the charges he'd been picked up on, trespassing and larceny, but Varric's perfectly clean record and Malcolm's rhetorical skills had convinced the judge that he wasn't a flight risk.

The prosecutor, one of the junior assistants named Rylen, wasn't entirely sure why he'd been woken up and ordered to come down to do a proper arraignment in front of a judge just before midnight, but he'd been Cullen's suggestion. "He's smart and he'll do it by the rules, even if the time is a little unorthodox."

The whole situation was pretty unorthodox, but if you had power like Malcolm Hawke did, and if everything was at least fifty percent hinky anyway, you might as well use it. Marian approved. Cullen was still a little uncertain about everything; she could tell because his brow was still furrowed. He’d gotten back from The Hanged Man less than an hour after he’d left, and he’d stayed until the bitter end. He could have gone home; he wasn’t even supposed to be working, but there he was.

"Do any of you need a ride home?" Cullen asked.

"I expect my car's still here," Malcolm said. "Although I'm not certain where my keys have gone."

"Oh," Cullen said, pulling them from his pocket. "I've got them. Garrett didn't have time to get them to you earlier."

"Then I can drive my daughter and Varric home. But thank you so much for your help, Cullen. Hopefully we'll see you for fourth Sunday dinner soon?"

"Ah, if I can," Cullen said, clearly uncomfortable.

Marian couldn't resist, because she was a terrible person. "Thanks, Cullen," she said in a throaty voice, and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

He sputtered and excused himself very quickly.

Once he was out of earshot, Varric laughed. "Marian, did you have to torment that poor boy?"

"What would Fenris think?" Malcolm asked.

"Yes, I did," she said to Varric, and, "He'd laugh, you know he would," to her father.

"He'd be jealous," Malcolm said.

"What would he have to be jealous of?" Marian snapped. "Let's go." She stalked off in the direction of the nearest parking structure.

"There are two ways to take that sentence," her dad said, walking easily alongside her. "First, that he has nothing to be jealous of because there's nothing between you, and second, that he would have nothing to be jealous of because he knows there's nothing between you and Cullen."

"Both." Marian attempted to leave no room for discussion. It was extremely annoying having a father who was a lawyer, sometimes.

She was saved by Varric, fortunately. "Hey, could you maybe slow down a little? Not everyone here's over six feet tall."

It was true; Varric was on the short end of average, or "extremely short" in Hawke family terms. Marian and Malcolm slowed down and looked back at Varric, who was trotting along perhaps a little quickly for a man who had spent the last four days in custody. "Sorry about that," Marian said, actually meaning it. 

They got to the car, and Malcolm said, "Where am I going?"

"My place," Marian said. "Varric, you're crashing with me tonight."

"Marian, I could probably fall asleep in the back of this car." He looked around him. "It's a pretty nice car, but still. I'm not sure I care where I end up. My place is fine, but yours is fine, too."

"I just don't want you to be in your place, alone," she said.

"Good call," Malcolm said. "Marian's it is."

They got there relatively quickly, due to the late hour, and Marian woke Varric out of his doze and herded him up into her building.

When they got in the door of her apartment, Marian and Varric both froze. "There's someone here," Varric said, almost inaudibly.

"Oh, it's just me," came from the direction of the bedroom--Isabela. She walked in wearing an oversized t-shirt and clearly nothing else. "Well, hello, Varric. Am I interrupting something? A post-freedom bash? I'm happy to watch."

"Hi, Bela," Marian said. "Avoiding your friends again?"

"'Friends' is such an elastic word," she said.

"I'm crashing here tonight," Varric said, "emphasis on the crash part. Marian, your couch folds out, right?" He headed for the living room without waiting for an answer. They heard the creak of the couch and then an ostentatious snoring noise, so Marian figured he was good.

"Well, anyway," Marian said. "Yeah, we got him out of jail. Fuck, I'm tired." She yawned. "I'll join you in a moment."

"I'll be waiting for you."

Marian did the usual bedtime routine and then stripped down to underwear before throwing on an oversized shirt like the one Isabela had stolen from her. She settled into bed; Bela shifted, and Marian settled her head against Bela's shoulder. Comfort was nice. She could use some right now.

She woke up some time later, not nearly long enough, feeling smothered. Apparently she'd accidentally buried her face in Bela's cleavage while she was sleeping. One of Isabela's hands was tucked into the back of her underwear, though, so it wasn't as if she were taking undue advantage alone. Marian carefully removed Bela's hand before she rolled over, found a pair of pajama pants, and went to see what had awakened her.

Varric was awake and on the phone, trying to speak softly; that might have been it. He looked at her as she came into the room and winced. "Sorry," he said.

"Who are you talking to?" she asked.

"Your dad. He had some questions this morning."

It was morning, but just barely. "Did you get any sleep?"

"Some. Not sure he did. It's just Marian, Malcolm." He put his hand over the end of the phone again. "He says hi."

"Hi, Dad. I'll let you finish your conversation."

It was early, but she was up now, as annoyed as that made her. She headed into the bathroom to shower and get ready. Back in her bedroom a few minutes later, she dropped the towel and heard an appreciative whistle. Right. Bela.

"Don't suppose I can convince you to come back to bed for a bit?" Bela said.

Marian shook her head. "There's stuff that needs to be done," she said.

" _I_ need to be done," Isabela said, but it was half-hearted at best.

Marian pulled on a bra and underwear and then sat on the edge of the bed. "Hey, for real, though, who are Zevran and Lyna to you?"

"Ugh, it's sordid."

"Ah, yeah, because I'm definitely not someone who wants to hear a sordid story."

"I should have expected that," Bela said. "Zev and I were lovers for a while and then he fell head over heels in love with Lyna. We weren't monogamous, so that wasn't a problem, but . . ."

"But?"

"Oh, all right, woman," Bela said, falling back against the pillows with a huff. "We had a night together, all three of us, and then I left."

"That bad?"

"You know it wasn't," Bela said, one arm going over her eyes. "Jesus. Lyna eats pussy like a pro and let's put it this way: you know how good martial arts masters are in the sack, right?"

"Why would you think that?" Marian asked sharply.

"That judo black-belt you fucked last year, what was her name?"

"Oh," Marian said. Bela hadn't meant Fenris. "Cara. Yeah, she was something else."

"Why, who did you think I meant? Oh, my God, you slept with Fenris." Bela sat straight up. "Well, it's about fucking time. He's delicious. Did he go down on you? Please say yes. He's fucking amazing with his tongue."

There was no way she could deny any of this. "I'm not dishing any details."

"Well, you have to! I can't exactly ask _him_ for any, can I?"

"Then maybe you aren't getting any," Marian snapped, but she immediately felt bad about it. "Fuck, Bela, I'm sorry. We had a fight."

"You and Fen? Oh. About you being a mage?"

"No, actually. Well, a little. Mostly about me being Garrett's sister."

"What does that have to do with anything? I've slept with all of you."

"I don't know. He's got _feelings. _Anyway, we were talking about your love life, not mine." Marian went to the closet and found a pair of jeans and a shirt to wear.__

__"We can talk about both," Bela said. "So, yeah, it's been a year. I think, although I haven't read any of the notes they've been leaving, that they decided I'd run long enough." She shrugged. "But I'm pretty sure I'm the one who gets to make the decision on how long I get to run, not them."_ _

__"That's true," Marian said. "Just tell me, and I'll ban them." She finished getting dressed and stood._ _

__"I'll tell you if I think we need to go that far," Isabela said._ _

__Marian went back into the living room, where Varric was sitting on the couch, staring at his phone. "Everything good?" she asked._ _

__"I just had a forty-five minute discussion with my lawyer on how exactly we're going to be able to get any evidence to prove anything of what I told him, and we're still stumped," he said. "How's your day?"_ _

__"I accidentally told Isabela that I slept with Fenris and now she wants details," she said, aware that she was 'accidentally' telling Varric as well._ _

__"Ooof," Varric said. "Might be worse than mine. Also, if you're sharing details . . ."_ _

__"I am not sharing details," she said._ _

__"At least tell me I don't have to threaten to kill him in grisly ways in my next book."_ _

__"He's great in bed and anything else I can handle my own damn self," Marian said. "Now what sort of evidence do you need?"_ _

__She knew the details of how he'd gotten picked up for trespassing: apparently Bartrand owned a pawn shop, which was not something that Marian had known. It wasn't something that Varric had known, until the day he'd gotten called about Bartrand not paying his rent. He'd gone down that day, Saturday, and Bartrand had called the cops on him. Given that Bartrand had also forged Varric's name on the lease as a co-signer, the trespassing was almost undoubtedly going to be thrown out, but still. The larceny was related and just as spurious._ _

__"I don't even know. It's going to be difficult to prove that all of this is related, that Bartrand is the lynchpin to this whole heap of shit, but that would be the goal."_ _

__"And Bartrand is currently in the custody of SHIELD."_ _

__"Yeah. And since we can't get a hold of them unless The Spook shows up at the bar again, we're fucked."_ _

__"Little bit," Marian said. She sat on the arm of her couch, feet on a cushion--what? It was her couch--and tried to think. "So we have to get Meredith to talk. Good luck on that."_ _

__"There's got to be some paperwork somewhere, though."_ _

__"In one of the illegal gambling dens?" she asked._ _

__"I don't know, maybe, shit."_ _

__"Which one?" Isabela asked. She had on a pair of Marian's pajama pants under her oversized shirt, but even though she was clothed, she wasn't quite decent. She'd knotted up the shirt so that it showed her midriff and the pants were hanging off of her hips, being that she was a couple sizes smaller than Marian._ _

__Marian admired the effort she'd put in for two people who definitely weren't going to sleep with her and said, "Why? Do you have connections in the illegal gambling world?"_ _

__"No," Bela said on a sigh, "but Zevran does."_ _

__"Who?" Varric asked._ _

__"Blond guy, vaguely Latinx accent."_ _

__Bela laughed. "He's from Queens."_ _

__"That doesn't make him less Latinx," Marian said._ _

__"I know that, white girl--” Marian winced apologetically. “--but it makes him less 'foreign' and 'exotic' and whatever bullshit he's trying to pull right now." She sighed again. "Where does Bartrand gamble?"_ _

__A phone call and a conversation--mostly in Spanish, but Marian understood well enough to get the gist of it--and apparently Zev was going to look into things._ _

__"It has to be admissible in court," Varric said._ _

__"Yes, I told him that twice," Isabela said, "and then I made sure that Lyna heard me."_ _

__"We'll see what he can pull up," Marian said. "And this should help us with Anders, too."_ _

__"Yeah, and then he won't have to marry Garrett," Bela said._ _

__"He probably will anyway," Varric said. "Have you seen the two of them together? There's smoldering."_ _

__"They could, like, date," Marian said, but privately she was of that opinion, too, especially given that she knew how much Anders wanted to bang her brother. She was trying to forget that information, but she knew it._ _

__"Are we going to need to go through court with this, though?" Varric asked. "If we can get Meredith to back down, we can get ICE to back down, and then the NYPD, and then probably the prosecutor will throw out the charges against me and the warrant for Anders's arrest won't be issued. And then the pressure against the hospital to stop sponsoring Anders's visa would disappear."_ _

__"That's an awful lot of moving pieces."_ _

__"And it all hinges on proving that Bartrand is in debt to Meredith," Bela said._ _

__"Does Bartrand keep records of any sort?" Marian asked._ _

__"Oh, extensive ones, but not necessarily ones we can get a hold of, or ones that we could understand if we got a hold of them."_ _

__"Why not?"_ _

__"They're probably locked up somewhere and encoded."_ _

__"And you have no idea where?" Bela asked._ _

__"I mean, he's got four properties that I would know to look at," Varric said. "I know where they are because he put my fucking name on the lease or the title for all of them."_ _

__"Then you can go in, can't you?"_ _

__"I don't have the keys."_ _

__"That's not that much of a problem," Bela said, exchanging a glance with Marian._ _

__"You would think if anyone in this group could pick locks, it'd be you," Marian said._ _

__"Nah," Varric said. "No real reason to learn."_ _

__"Well, guess what," Marian said._ _

__"You know how to pick locks? And even if you do, some of the records are bound to be electronic. How are we going to get through those?" He put his head in his hands._ _

__"You're a real downer today," Bela said. "But guess what--we can fix it for you."_ _

__"How?"_ _

__"What if I told you that we have a computer genius and a lockpicker on staff that we could call for you?" Bela said._ _

__"Then I'd ask why you've been holding out on me." Varric's face was starting to brighten. "Which one of you picks locks and which one hacks computers?"_ _

__"Neither of us," Marian said. "This doesn't go in your books."_ _

__"No more than your torrid affair with Fenris," Varric promised._ _

__"Hey, did you give _him_ details?!"_ _

__"No, I didn't," Marian said. "Also, Varric, don't mention it to Fenris."_ _

__"I won't."_ _

__"Because he's the computer genius, and Merrill's the lockpick."_ _

____

***

Fenris was more than a little surprised to get a phone call from Marian--not a text, a phone call--on the way to work. "Yes?"

"I don't suppose you can call in sick," she said.

"Is there an emergency?"

"I wouldn't call it an emergency, but we need your help and time is not unlimited."

"Tell me," he said, even though he was on a crowded subway and someone would probably be able to hear.

"Varric needs to perfectly legally enter a couple of buildings that he owns or rents and find some records that he, as owner or renter of the property, is absolutely within his rights to access."

Fenris sighed. She wanted him to hack into Bartrand's computers. "You know it doesn't work like that."

"I know, but help us, Obi-Wan Fenobi. You're our only hope."

"Is after lunch too late?"

"Absolutely not. That'll give us enough time to get organized."

"Send me the addresses. I'll meet you there."

"Sure." She hung up before he could say anything else, although he really didn't know what he would have said. Nothing, if he was smart.

Of course, if he were actually smart, he would’ve said no to her, but it was Marian. It was a foregone conclusion that he’d be there. Fenris sighed and started typing an email to his boss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been the hobbit in Rivendell, or Varric hanging around with the Hawkes (i.e., I went to one of feelslikefire's family holidays) and boy, let me tell you, that was fun.
> 
> Also the "possibly Mexican" food is not Mexican; it's [this](https://www.kevinandamanda.com/cajun-chicken-rice/).
> 
> And, as always, yes, the legal stuff is 85 percent bullshit. I am decidedly aware.


	12. ~in which there are more revelations~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marian, Varric, Merrill, Bela, and Fenris go traipsing around with poorly done taxidermy. However, disaster strikes . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More info on [Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/182074843113/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-12). Take care with this one, too.

Despite all three of them being sleep-deprived from the legal system and the fuss at the Hanged Man, they decided they should go start looking through Bartrand's properties. Varric borrowed Marian's shower first. Marian doled out peanut butter sandwiches, and Bela took hers to go retrieve Merrill. All four of them took a cab, damn the expense, over to the first of the properties that Varric sort of owned. Fenris met them there, leaning against the side of the building, looking at his phone.

He was looking unacceptably hot in gray dress pants--did he own an unlimited supply of them? Probably--and a black leather jacket, but Marian ignored her hormones and greeted him briskly.

"Marian," he said. "Merrill, Varric, Bela. Shall we?"

This particular property was the pawn shop; they'd discussed the matter, and they thought it was the most likely to be where Bartrand was hiding all the sketchy information. Bela and Marian stood to block the view of any random passers-by. Varric pretended to pull a key out of his pocket to open the lock while Merrill did her party trick and unlocked the door.

("Wait, can Merrill actually pick locks?" Varric had asked as they traveled over.

"No," Marian said, "but she's got alchemy and magery in the perfect combination such that locks just . . . behave for her."

"Huh," Varric said. "So you can't pick locks that way?"

She shook her head. "Not enough alchemy. Garrett can through sheer force of power, but he doesn't."

"And why did you never mention to me that Fenris is a computer genius?"

"That might be overselling it a bit, but he's a computer security engineer for Garrett's company. Didn't you know that?"

"Somehow I missed it," Varric said. "Damnit, Champ, why did I promise that none of this would go in my books?"

"You're a sucker," Marian said.)

They filed into the dark storefront; it smelled awful in there, like poorly done taxidermy. Marian only knew that it smelled like poorly done taxidermy because when Varric flicked on the overhead lights, she saw an entire rack of poorly done taxidermy against one wall. Why was there always shitty taxidermy in pawn shops? Was it a law or something?

Merrill stayed behind to lock the door again behind them, and then they spread out to explore the building.

"I swear this shit is haunted," Bela muttered under her breath.

"Don't even _say_ that," Varric said. "I don't know what the hell Bartrand was into."

"Oh, could he do magic?" Merrill asked.

"No, not a damn bit, but . . ." Varric shivered. "I just don't like the feel of this place. Do you?"

"Fuck, no," Marian said. "Let's get this over with."

The actual stock of the pawn shop was unexceptional, other than the taxidermy, and coated with so much dust that Marian sneezed several times in succession just from brushing up against a display case. "Did he even run this as a pawn shop, or did he just, like, buy out an old pawn shop and use it as a . . . I don't know what."

"Probably that," Varric said. "I'm going behind the counter."

It turned out that there was a bunch of ledgers under the counter, but they were all either some sort of classic ledger collection (that couldn't be a thing) or actual legitimate pawn-shop ledgers. The cash register was old-school, but new enough to support credit cards. "Nothing here," Varric reported after a few minutes.

"This is a creepy place," Merrill said.

"There's a back room, I'm pretty sure," Bela said. "Maybe even a basement."

"Let's try the back room first. We've got three other places after this one, if the pawn shop doesn't pan out."

"God, I hope it does," Marian said.

The back room contained a jumble of crap, including more poorly taxidermied animals, even worse than the ones out in the main room. Where did he even get these? A few minutes of sorting through it and they were all pretty certain that there was nothing in there of any interest.

"Why are there so many damn dead animals?" Marian asked, not expecting to get an answer.

"Drugs," Fenris said, speaking up for the first time in a while. "Most likely either he or the previous owner had been accepting drug shipments."

"Inside taxidermied animals?" Merrill said.

"Well," Marian said, considering, "who's gonna look inside a dead raccoon?" 

They all shuddered. "Let's see what's in the basement," Varric said.

"Why does that sound like the start of a horror movie?" Bela asked.

No one responded--probably because they were afraid of the answer.

***

Fenris did not want to be trapped in the basement of a sketchy pawn shop, but here he was, following behind Marian as she walked down the stairs. Buildings in this neighborhood did typically have a basement, usually one that went the full length of the building, but it became apparent almost as soon as they got to the base of the stairs that this was not a typical basement. For one thing, it was surprisingly nice. Not nice per se, but it had been finished at one point, probably twenty or thirty years ago. The walls were whitewashed concrete blocks rather than raw. The floor was painted as well, a drab gray, although a good deal of the paint had chipped off.

Of course, it was also a maze of shelving stuffed full of more items. Fenris, along with the others, wandered around, making sure that there wasn't anything on the shelves that could be of interest.

He was inspecting an inexpensive but surprisingly accurate broadsword when Isabela called out, "I think I've found a door."

She thought? But as he got closer to her, he discovered why she was so hesitant: the door also had shelves on it. The doorknob was almost invisible among the clutter. Merrill touched the doorknob and it opened, revealing a room that looked more like the basement that Fenris had expected.

"Ew," Marian said, and he had to agree. The stench of closed-up room was a bit overwhelming. He also thought he smelled a little eau de dead rat.

"Is there anything even in there?"

"A desk," Varric, who was in the lead, said. "With a computer on it. Fenris, your time to shine."

Marian snorted, and he thought about hitting her on the shoulder but decided not to. Pushing through the group, he got to the front and looked around the room.

There were three doors, the one that had let them in and two others. Fenris didn't want to know where the other two led, not at that moment. The walls were bare concrete; there was a single incandescent bulb, surprisingly not burned out, in a socket above them, with a pull string attached to it. (How Varric had seen the pull string was a question, but not a burning one.) The room was big enough for the five of them to stand inside easily and not be on top of each other or on the desk, but not much larger. The only furniture, or at least the only furniture that he could see--he wasn't going to discount something hidden in one of the dark corners--was the desk.

It looked like a normal desk, to both his magical vision and the mundane variety. Comprised of the metal-and-Formica combination that dominated office desks for the last fifty years or so, it had a rickety wooden chair shoved all the way in. On top of the desk was a laptop, a boxy model five or seven years out of date, but one that he'd owned at the time. He was definitely familiar with how it worked. There was a separate keyboard in front of it, and, having worked in IT for several years now, Fenris picked up the keyboard and turned it over to find two or three Post-It notes stuck to the bottom. "Aha," he said.

"What?" Varric said.

"I have some options for what the password might be."

"Knowing Bartrand, it's probably something like 'password,'" Varric said.

"We shall see." He ran his hands around the perimeter of the desk, looking for something odd, but he found nothing. Flipping open the laptop, he checked to see if it was plugged in or if the battery light was on--neither, so he found the cord and plugged it into the wall, another bare socket. Up close, the chair looked like it would hold his weight, even if it was suspiciously damp, and he'd rather sit down than stand if he had to work for any period of time.

He pulled the chair out and sat down, his weight causing the chair to shift down farther than expected. His hands shot out to brace himself against a fall--and immediately he felt an excruciating pain in his midsection. He gasped, and Marian was at his side instantly. "What is it?" she said.

"Stabbed," he said, and they both looked down to see the hilt of a knife coming out of his stomach. The hilt was somehow attached to the desk, by a spring of some sort-- _oh_. It had been a trap.

"Shit fuck shit, someone go upstairs and call 911!" Varric yelled.

"No--" Fenris said, but he was starting to black out from the shock and pain. He dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand to try to stay awake. "No ambulance."

"Fenris, can I--" Marian asked and he nodded. He didn't care what she wanted to do; it would be fine. She was Marian. He trusted her.

She pulled up his shirt on one side and put her hands on his skin. He felt a spark, but it didn't come with the usual scraping pain. He looked down at her hands and saw green--oh, right, Marian could Heal. Not like Anders, but some. The pain was receding a little, but not enough to clear his head.

"I can't fix this by myself," Marian was saying to Merrill. "Can I borrow your power?"

Merrill shook her head. "You can, but I can't Heal. It won't do much good."

"Fuck," Bela said. "No ambulance, really?"

"Really," Marian said. "It would--it would go badly. Not--not magical reasons, but trust me on this one. Someone go upstairs and call Garrett. No, call Anders. No, call both of them. If Anders is at work, we can go there, but if not, we have to get him here." To Fenris she said, "I'm sorry, I know you don't like him, but he already knows at least a little bit, and I trust him."

"It's fine," he said. His voice was starting to sound a little distant; he was going into shock. Or maybe he was about to pass out. Marian's strength was helping, but he only had so much himself. Thank the Maker she knew him so well. "I may . . ."

"You're not going to die, you surly bastard," Marian said.

Fenris was startled into a chuckle. "Didn't know you cared," he said, trying to make a joke. "But I may pass out."

"Liar," she said. "You know full well that I care." She tried to smile, but what little Healing she was doing was clearly exhausting her.

"I do," he admitted. "And I love you too."

And with that, he promptly lost consciousness.

It was only for a second or two, but when he woke up he was still groggy and Varric and Bela were arguing about whether they should take the knife out or not. "It's still attached to the desk," Bela was saying.

"I can cut the spring," Varric said.

"With what?" Bela said. 

"This."

Fenris heard more than saw a wire-cutter clip the spring; it jostled the knife, bringing a fresh wave of pain.

"Don't, Maker," Marian said, her voice even more strained than it had been. "I'm just barely keeping the whole mess from bleeding. Do we have a car? And a blanket. If he goes in like this, we won't have any control over the situation at all."

"Don't--" Fenris said, although he didn't know what he was going to ask her not to do.

"We have to take you to the hospital, Fen," she said, her voice softer. "I'm just trying to buy us enough time that we can tell someone that some of the sedation drugs will kill you faster than a gut wound."

"All right," he said. "I trust you."

"I trust you, too," she said.

It wasn't _I love you_ , but it would do.

***

Anders didn't have much time to take personal calls or texts or whatnot at work, although he did have enough time to moon over Garrett and plan out five or ten versions of what he wanted to say the next time they had time together. _Hello, Garrett. I'm an asshole._ No, too obvious. _Garrett, let me explain to you why I want to overthrow the upper class_. . . a slight exaggeration. _Garrett, I said absurd things and I don't know what to do about the fact that I like you but on paper I should hate you . . ._

But it wasn't the damn money, was it? Anders tried to avoid self-awareness at any given opportunity but he knew a few things about himself, and he knew the money issue was just an excuse.

 _Garrett, don't leave me . . ._ He winced and went back to completing his notes.

And then he was patching up a couple of cyclists who had a bad interaction with a taxi and everything got busy and he forgot all about Garrett for a couple hours. Later, though, he got paged over the intercom to take a phone call after feeling his phone buzz for multiple texts, and his mind snapped back to his erstwhile fiance. "Yes?" he said into the handset.

"Oh, good, you are at work," Varric said.

Anders frowned. That was not who he had expected or, for that matter, what. "Yes, I am, for another five or six hours," he said. "Why?"

"So we're gonna be there in about--" Muffled conversation. "--twenty minutes with an unconscious Fenris and we need you to take care of him."

"Oh," Anders said. "You mean because of the--"

"Yeah, because of the. Actually, I have no idea, but Marian says you and only you, so there's that."

Anders briefly wondered what Fenris did for the rest of his medical needs and then put the thought aside. "Yes, I'll be here and available unless there's a major disaster."

"Cool. Someone will text you when we get close."

"Got it."

Anders looked at his text messages after that--one from Bela, two from Garrett, the first asking where he was and the two from Garrett trying to get him to answer his texts. What was going on? 

He found Lirene, the nursing supervisor, who had some Healing ability of her own in addition to her formidable nursing skill set. “We’ve got a potential Code Silver coming in,” he said, Code Silver being the internal keywords for a magical injury or similar. “Can we--can they come in through the ambulance bay?”

“Do you know anything else about the patient?” she asked. “I’ll call Didi and Karen.” There were a number of nurses who could respond to Code Silvers, and those two were on duty today.

“He’s unconscious. I can check to see if he’s in the system. But he's--you'll see. He has half-healed scars from an old, traumatic magical injury, and I'm going to have to ask Marian, his, ah, girlfriend, if she knows how that'll change things before we can do much.”

She agreed to help, even though she warned him that if the patient was a level one trauma case, he wouldn't have much time at all. Anders didn't even have to ask why; he knew it wasn't a threat so much as a balancing act. He needed to find out the extent of the situation, but if Fenris needed emergency surgery, even the smallest delay could spell disaster.

Fenris was in the system, surprisingly--he’d been there for an injury of some sort a year ago, and there was a meds and allergies list on file. Good. That would help. Anders bit his nails (metaphorically speaking) until he got a text from Bela saying they were close, and then he directed her to the ambulance bay, which was fortunately not full at the moment.

Lirene took one look at Fenris, covered in a blue moving blanket obviously stolen from U-Haul at one point, and said to Anders, "I see what you mean, but you have a minute, tops, before I page him out as a trauma, and Didi is going in anyway."

"Thank you," he said, his mind already running ahead to the next piece. The trauma page would bring a whole group of doctors and staff into the room, ending his window, so he'd have to act fast.

Even with the moving blanket, he could see that Fenris had been stabbed in the gut. The knife was still in there, thank the Maker, but they had no time to spare. 

Once in the examination room, he let Didi work on vitals--Fenris's BP hadn't tanked, although he was going to need fluids soon, and his heart rate was accelerated, unsurprisingly. His O2 sats were solid and his BP was only a little low, but--“Can you move back?” he said to Marian. His time was almost up.

She still had her hands on Fenris, and how she’d managed that after as long as it had been was beyond him. “Not--without--letting him--bleed--out,” she ground out, and only then he saw the strain on her face and in her arms. 

He flipped over into Healing sight and--”His spleen is lacerated, but he's not bleeding. You’re almost out, though.”

“I’m aware.”

“I can fix that,” he said and put his hand on the back of Marian’s neck, sending a burst of Healing energy into her.

Fenris screamed, his body bowing off the table, and Marian snatched her hands back. “Fuck!” 

“What--” But Fenris had passed out, and Anders's time was up. Karen and Lirene rushed in, along with a crash cart.

"He's been stabbed, we need a CT scan," Anders said loudly as the trauma surgeon strode up to him and demanded to know what was going on, and then everything started to happen very quickly.

He grabbed Marian by the arm and pulled her into the hallway as the team started the trauma one protocol properly. "Any allergies not on his list? Or--interactions?"

"Yes, he's got prescriptions for--” She listed a couple of drugs, used to treat both anxiety or depression and fibromyalgia, nothing Anders hadn’t known from the computer. “And Xanax as needed, but I don't know the last time he took any.” She then named two common anesthesia meds. “Don’t use those. They'll actually kill him. Like, dead. I don't know why, but--"

"Doesn't matter," Anders said, and he ran back into the room.

***

Garrett ran into the hospital as fast as he could. "Fenris Wolfe," he said to the person behind the desk. "With an E. He just came in a few minutes ago. Where is he?"

"What's your name?" When he gave it, the receptionist tapped at a few keys. "Ah, you're on his list. He's on the second floor, in surgery. You can check with the receptionist there to see where you can wait."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Garrett said. "Sorry."

"I've heard worse," she said. "Elevators are that way."

Once he was on the second floor, the receptionist there directed him to a lobby around the corner. "I believe several of his friends are in there as well."

"Thank you so much," he said.

Marian, Varric, Bela, and Merrill were there, just as the receptionist had mentioned. Marian stood as soon as she saw him and threw herself at him; he had just enough time to see that she had blood all over her shirt and to decide that he didn't care.

They clung to each other for long moments as Marian's shoulders shook. Garrett waited until she pulled away to say, "What's the latest?"

"Spleen," Marian said. "He got stabbed--there was some sort of trap to stab whoever sat in the seat where the computer was, and--"

"Hold on," Garrett said. "Where were you? I missed that part of the story."

Marian exchanged a look with Varric. "We were in a building that Varric is leasing," she said. "Not that he knew he was leasing it until recently, but his name is on the lease. We were looking for financial records. There was a secret room in the basement, with a desk with a computer, and we brought along Fenris because computers."

"Okay, I've got that much," Garrett said. "Then he sat in the chair and some sort of trap released and stabbed him."

"Yes, that," Marian said.

"It wasn't magical," Merrill said, "just springs and levers."

"Definitely illegal," Bela said.

"Probably dirty," Marian said, "but I did what I could and then we brought him to Anders. I think you know the rest."

"He's in emergency surgery?"

"Yeah. Anders is--I don't know what he's doing. He tried to--" She waved a hand in the air. “--but it didn’t go well.”

“Not surprising," Garrett said. 

“But Marian could touch him,” Varric said.

Marian shook her head. “I’m low-powered, like a heating pad as opposed to a forest fire.”

“It makes a difference?” Bela asked.

Marian leaned over to run a fingernail over the back of Bela’s hand. “That doesn’t hurt much, does it? But imagine if it was five hundred times more pressure.”

“Point.”

"So we wait,” Garrett said.

"We wait."

Apparently an emergency splenectomy took several hours, especially with complications like Fenris's reaction to one of the sedation drugs not on his list. A nurse updated them once or twice, mostly to say that everything was under control, but it was still long enough for all of them to experience the horrific combination of terror and boredom that accompanied waiting like this. Which was probably why Garrett finally thought to ask, "What happened to the computer?"

"I brought it with us," Varric said. "It's in the car."

"Wait, whose car?"

"Bartrand has a car," Varric said, a little grimly. "By which I mean the car is under my name. So we took it."

"Well," Garrett said, "what are you going to do with the computer?"

"It would really suck to find out that wasn't even the computer we need," Bela said. "I'll go grab it. We'll see if any of the passwords work."

"It's your laptop, right?" Garrett asked Varric, only half joking.

"He probably used a credit card that had my name on it to buy it, so yes," Varric said.

Marian had stood up from where she'd been tucked into Garrett's side and started pacing. Garrett knew there wasn't anything he could do to make her stop and sit back down, so he said, "Hey, we should go get coffee or something."

"Coffee?"

"Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're waiting for someone in a hospital?"

"Yeah, why not," Marian said.

Garrett gestured to everyone else to stay behind. "We'll be back probably about when Bela returns with the laptop," he said.

"Cool," Bela said. "See you in a few."

She left, heading the opposite direction from Garrett and Marian. "Do you know where the cafeteria is?" she asked.

"No idea," he said, "but if it isn't this direction, we'll get someone to tell us. How are you doing?"

Marian heaved a sigh. "Did someone tell you?"

"Tell me what?" All he knew was, well, what he already knew about how Fenris felt about Marian.

"The last words that Fenris said before the first time he passed out from this were, 'I love you, too.'" She sounded more than a little pissed off about this.

"Too?"

"Yes, the asshole."

"That's great, though, isn't it?" Garrett tried to keep his elation out of his voice. 

She shot a glance at him. "You're already planning our wedding, aren't you?"

"No," he said, and before she could accuse him of lying, added, "I'll let Mother do that."

"The fuck you will," she said, but now she was grinning.

A nurse stopped them in the hallway and sent them back an intersection when they explained what they were looking for--apparently there was an actual coffee shop inside the building--but Garrett picked up the conversation like it had never been interrupted. "But honestly, I'm happy the two of you figured things out. A little."

"Yeah, well." She was glowering; he didn't even have to look at her to tell. "Did you know?"

"How he feels about you? He kind of told me in a backhanded fashion. How you feel about him? Marian, I love you, but that shit was obvious."

"Fuck you," she growled, but it didn't hold much heat. "I meant did he tell you that we slept together."

"Oh, that, yeah, he did tell me. And effectively apologized, but I told him to bite his tongue."

"That's what I told him." She stopped just outside of the coffee shop. "Maker damn it, Garrett, I'm in love with your best fucking friend."

"I know," he said and pulled her into another hug. "Good news, though: he's in love with you too."

"This is bullshit," she said into his shoulder. "I hate it. Being in love feels like stomach flu."

"That could also be the situation. I'm also a little sick to my stomach."

"Yeah, maybe." She didn't sound convinced, though.

"You've been in love before, right?" Marian was typically fairly loud about her sex life and fairly quiet about actual romantic feelings, but he was pretty sure she'd had them about a few people over the years. Pretty sure.

He felt her shrug. "I don't know, maybe. I know I am now and it sucks."

"It'll suck less soon. Or maybe more. I don't want to know what you two get up to together."

She punched him in the shoulder, laughing. “Maker, I can't believe I even like his ridiculous bleached hair.”

“What? It's not bleached.”

Marian stopped in the middle of the hallway and looked at him. “But it used to be black.”

“That was dye,” Garrett said. “No, his hair’s actually white. Wouldn't you have seen roots once or twice over the last eight years?”

“I spent a lot of time not thinking about things like his hair,” she said, voice a little tight. “But the rest of his hair is all dark.”

Garrett raised an eyebrow at her and she sputtered. “His eyebrows!” she said. “I mean, yeah, that too, but…”

He took pity on her. “I know. I don't know why it's just the hair on his scalp. Sometimes strange things happen from stress.”

“Couldn't quite explain it,” she said, and he rolled his eyes at her.

They started walking again. “So he dyed his hair black for a couple years?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Then we got back from break one spring and he just shaved his head because he was sick of getting yelled at for leaving hair dye stains in the sink and shower. Shaved head is not a good look on him, by the way.”

“Wouldn't have thought so.”

“And his hair has been as you see it ever since.”

“Yep.”

Marian sighed. “I have a lot to learn,” she said under her breath.

“At least you'll enjoy learning about him.”

“Assuming he survives this.”

“He will. He'd better.”

But after that, there wasn't much to say, so they had to resign themselves to waiting. Garrett had always hated waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, man, I'm sorry this is a few hours late, but my poor beta, who is an ER nurse by training, took one look at all of the ER stuff and was like NOPE NOPE NOPE YOU NEED TO FIX ALL OF THIS. Which was EXACTLY what I asked for, don't get me wrong, but it just took a while to fix it all.
> 
> Anyway, I've never been to New York Presbyterian, so I just made some stuff up, like whether they still have curtains in their ER or not. The medical stuff is otherwise as accurate as I can make it, taking, you know, magic and storytelling into context. Any mistakes are all mine! I swear. 
> 
> I'm not going to apologize for the Crash Test Dummies reference.
> 
> ALSO I PROMISE THIS STORY HAS A HAPPY ENDING.


	13. ~in which there are altogether too many people in a smallish hospital room~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris gets through the surgery, but there's still danger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More info on [Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/182260512708/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-13).

Emotional revelations aside, they’d made it all the way to the coffee shop, so they might as well bring some back. Garrett paid for four coffees, figuring someone would drink the extras, while Marian loaded up her pockets with napkins and sugar and creamer. When they got back and saw Anders in the room, Garrett stiffened. Marian did as well. "Is anything wrong?" he asked.

"No," Anders said, "thank the Maker."

Garrett heard Marian let out her breath in a whoosh, and fortunately Anders stepped in to take the coffee from her before she dropped it.

"I've called in a replacement for the rest of my shift," Anders said, setting the coffee on one of the tables. "I'm not in charge of any of Fenris's care, but I'll be staying around to help explain things and to help manage the, ah." He waved his hand in the air. "The metaphysical side of the situation, although one of the surgical nurses has that under control. That is, if you'd like me to stay?"

"Yes, please," Marian said almost before he'd stopped talking.

"Yeah, defintely," Garrett added. "Do you need me for anything? I’ve got his power of attorney, if necessary."

"I don't, but I can tell you that despite some minor complications, he made it through the surgery just fine. They're moving him to a recovery room shortly, where I will be able to check on him. Somewhat after that, Garrett, you can visit him, and probably Marian too, but I'm not sure about the rest of you."

"It's fine," Bela said, and the others nodded. "As long as Marian gets to see him. She kind of left him hanging."

"Ooooooh, burn," Varric said. Garrett reached over and offered him a high-five.

"I thought we weren't talking about that," Merrill said.

"We're not," Marian said, her tone final.

Not that Isabela cared, apparently. "You couldn't even throw him a Star Wars reference?"

"He fucking passed out," Marian said. "What was I supposed to do?"

"He woke up after that and you didn't say anything," Varric said.

"Well, neither did he," Marian said mutinously; she sat down, retrieved one of the coffees, and took a lid off to blow on it. 

"Anyway," Anders said, although he was grinning. Garrett thought he was rather enjoying the whole situation. "I'll send someone over when you can come in, Garrett, Marian."

"Thanks, Anders," Marian said, and Garrett echoed her.

Before Anders could walk away, a police officer came into the waiting room, asking if they had come in with Mr. Wolfe.

"Oh, yes," Anders said. "Right. Hospital protocol, for any kind of assault. I told them there wasn't an assailant, which kept us from going into lockdown, but Officer Valdez probably needs more details."

Marian exchanged a quick look with Varric. "I co-own a pawn shop," Varric said, and sketched out the details of what had happened.

"It was some sort of spring-loaded booby trap?" the officer asked. He was a little older than they were, probably mid-thirties, and Latinx. Garrett didn't recognize his name, but nothing about the officer's demeanor made Garrett think he needed to call Cullen or Carver or anyone.

"As far as we can tell, yeah," Varric said. "I didn't put it there. I'm not a manager of the business, just a silent partner."

"Do you know who put it there?"

"I have an idea," Varric said, and he gave the officer his brother's name and most recent address. "But I think he was arrested recently."

"I'll check. Thank you for your help." He got Marian and Varric's names and contact information and said he'd be back when Fenris was able to speak.

"So about that computer," Marian said, once the officer had left and Anders had gone off to check on Fenris. 

"Nice redirect," Varric said. "Bela's got it plugged in."

It took quite a while for it to become usable, because it wasn't the newest of laptops. Apparently no one had ever run updates on it, either. When they turned it on, it said something about installing update 1 of 7, and Garrett groaned. "I hate this version of Windows."

Twenty minutes later, it seemed to be working, and with Varric's help, they started trying passwords. The first three, all on the same sticky note, didn't work. The next one didn't either, and Garrett hesitated before trying the next one. "Work has the lockout attempt number set at five," he said. "I don't know what the default is. Fenris would."

"Well, he's not here," Marian said. "But Google is. Apparently the default is zero, so you're fine."

"Ahh," Garrett said. "Well, that's good for us." He set about trying all the rest of the passwords on the sticky notes.

There was no lockout threshold, apparently, but none of them worked. "Well, heck," he said. "Now what?"

"Did he just say 'heck'?" Bela asked. "Are we at a Cub Scout meeting?"

Marian snorted, but no one else responded.

Varric rattled off several series of names and numbers and whatnot that were all related to family pets, old addresses, old lovers, but none of them worked, either. "What's his middle name?"

"Doesn't have one. Neither do I."

"You already gave me your mother's maiden name . . ." On a whim, Garrett typed in "password," and even though it would have been funny, no, that wasn't it either. 

"Oh," Varric said suddenly. "Oh, shit."

"Shit?"

"Try 12345."

"Really?"

"His favorite movie is _Spaceballs._ "

"Of course his favorite fucking movie is _Spaceballs,_ " Marian said.

Garrett typed in "12345" and, with little fanfare, the laptop finally gave up its secrets. "Are you shitting me," he said, and started laughing.

He wasn't a computer genius, but after spending so many years around Fenris, Garrett had some idea what to do. He let Varric actually do the clicking but directed him where to look. They hunted through folders until they found--"Yep, the recycle bin has never been emptied."

"Doesn't it, like, automatically do that?" Varric asked.

"Not with the settings he has. And he probably forgot that the recycle bin existed because it wasn't on the desktop. Bingo."

"Bingo what?"

"Click on those image files."

"Which ones?"

"They're named IMG and some number," he said, pointing to the screen. "That usually means he took the pictures with his cell phone."

"Yeah but they could be--Oh, God, cannot unsee."

"Gah!" Garrett looked away, but it was too late: he'd seen something that was most likely Bartrand's junk.

"Yeah, that's the other thing that people take pictures of with their cell phones."

"Hey, let me see," Bela said.

"No," Garrett said. "You don't want to."

"That bad?"

"That bad."

"Mr. Hawke? Ms. Hawke?"

Garrett and Marian looked up, almost identical winces on their faces. "Yes?" Garrett said to the nurse who had entered the room.

"Mr. Wolfe is ready for visitors."

Marian stood up quickly, a little too quickly if her hand on the back of her chair was any indicator. "Let's go," she said.

"You keep looking," Garrett said to Varric. "Don't do anything if you do find anything, though."

"Gotcha," Varric said.

***

Marian and Garrett followed the nurse through the halls, up a floor in an elevator, and through another twisting seres of hallways until they got to an actual room. Anders was in there, checking a couple of monitors. Fenris was also there, of course, but he was still unconscious. "He should be waking up soon," Anders said. "It would probably be better to have a friendly face."

Garrett went over to the side of the bed and looked at Fenris; Marian did the same, starting with normal sight and then switching over to Sight. The silver lines over his body were a little faded, as they sometimes got when he was exhausted. There was also a weird break in them on his side, presumably where he'd been stabbed. She wanted to touch Fenris, to put her hand on his arm or kiss him on the forehead or something, but she was afraid she might not have enough control to do that right now. So she watched Garrett watching Fenris.

He loved Fenris, he really did; even if she didn’t know that as well as she knew her own name, it was written all over his face. Hearing that Fenris had been stabbed and needed emergency surgery had to have been one of the worst moments of his life. It was also clear that he was holding back tears by a sheer effort of will. When he got home he would probably cry into his pillow for a while, but she appreciated his self-control here and now. If he started crying, she wasn’t sure if she was strong enough not to fall to pieces herself.

Great, now there were tears streaming down her cheeks again. She'd long since lost her eyeliner and mascara, so she scrubbed a hand across her face and sniffled. This was awful. Why did she have _feelings_?

Garrett looked up and smiled at her. "All yours," he said.

"No, he's still yours," she said, but she smiled. "We can share him. Custody on alternate weekends."

He smiled back. "Everything went okay, you said?" The last was directed at Anders, who was holding Fenris's chart.

"He had an odd reaction to one of the sedation drugs, not one you mentioned," he said. "His heart rate spiked, but we were able to get it under control. The only question left is how he'll do as he comes out of the anesthesia, as you mentioned. We'll start him on IV pain meds once he's awake enough to ask for them, and the trauma surgeon will probably send him home with a prescription for oral pain meds. If he'll accept it?"

Garrett shrugged. "He might." 

Marian doubted he’d take anything stronger than ibuprofen, but it depended on how much pain he was actually in. It was worth a try, of course, and she might be able to ease a little of his pain herself. If she could keep her goddamn control.

"I expect he'll be kept overnight or maybe a day longer for observation, and then he'll get to go home. Given that he lives alone?" Anders waited for both of them to nod before continuing. "He'll need someone to stay with him for the first couple of days, but I doubt it'll be a problem."

"No, it won't," Marian said.

"He could stay with us," Garrett said. "Or my parents, which might be nicer."

"We'll see what he prefers," Anders said, which was probably a nice way of saying that Fenris was going to end up staying at his own place. He looked at the door, which was open, and then shut it quietly before saying, “The disruption in Fenris’s, ah, scars, and the incident earlier--I’ll apologize when he’s awake, but he’ll probably be in extra pain when he awakens.”

“Wait, what happened?” Garrett asked.

“I was keeping him stable, Anders shoved extra energy into me, Fenris didn’t react well,” Marian said tonelessly.

“Scars?”

“The silver lines,” Anders said. “They’re--ah, Maker, this isn’t the best time, but--” He held out a hand for Garrett, who took it with a questioning glance. “Can you See what I’m Seeing?”

Marian hadn’t known that Anders could do that, but she was grateful he hadn’t offered.

“I--maybe? Oh--yes. Oh, no.” Garrett let go of Anders’s hand abruptly. “They’re--they _always_ hurt? He told me they’d stopped--”

“He lied,” Marian said. She was very proud that her voice did not shake at all.

“Well, fuck.”

“Yeah. And here I thought they were just pretty.” Marian took a shuddery breath, and Garrett reached out and pulled her into his side. 

“I know,” he murmured into her hair.

"They may not _always_ hurt,” Anders said. “It’s impressive what the human body can get used to, and at least one of the meds he’s on does double duty as relief from certain kinds of pain. But, well, yes.”

“Still,” Garrett said.

Anders smiled sadly. “Indeed. If you’ll excuse me, I'm going to go grab some food. I'll be back shortly. The nurses should be coming by every couple minutes, but if you feel like you need one imminently, here's the button." He pointed it out.

"Thanks, Anders," Garrett said and clapped his fiance's shoulder with his free hand. “For everything you did.”

"I would say 'any time,' but I really hope this doesn't happen again. Is he going to press charges, do you think?"

"I don't know. Can you even press charges for something like this?"

"I think so, yes," Anders said.

"Maybe he will." 

Marian didn’t think so, knowing Fenris, but she still couldn’t say anything.

"All right. I'll see you soon." He slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“I didn’t know he’d been downplaying the pain all these years,” Garrett said quietly. “I should have expected it, I suppose.”

“I know they hurt him,” Marian said, not even sure her words would have been audible to anyone other than Garrett, “but--all the time?”

“I don’t know, Marian.”

“He’s so fucking gorgeous.” She meant the scars, not his face, but Garrett knew.

“I know, Marian. They are.”

Marian found herself seated in a chair by the side of the bed. Garrett turned around to grab one of the other chairs in the room, and of course that was right when Fenris regained consciousness.

It wasn't gradual, like most people coming out of anesthesia; he woke up suddenly and gasped, curling partway up, and then whimpering.

"Hey, Fenris," Marian said, her voice quiet and calm. She could keep calm for him.

Garrett had apparently remembered to freeze so he wouldn't surprise Fenris any more than he already was; he was standing, half-bent over a chair, and he straightened slowly.

"Marian," Fenris said, his voice, usually raspy, barely above a whisper.

"Garrett's here, too. Do you remember what happened?"

"Emergency surgery. Spleen."

"Yep," Marian said. "Doc says you'll be fine, though."

A nurse popped her head through the door; she looked a little like Marian, although her hair was shorter and more purple and she had two nose rings. "Hi, Mr. Wolfe," she said, also softly. "I see you've woken up. How do you feel?"

"Like I've been stabbed, and then stabbed again," he croaked.

The nurse laughed. "That's not inaccurate," she said. Her nametag said 'Kat.' "Do you know where you are?"

"Whichever hospital Anders works at. I didn't ask the name."

She asked him several other questions and apparently got acceptable responses. "Do you want any pain meds?"

"Oh, I suppose I should," Fenris said, sounding rather put out.

"Your blood pressure looks good. We'll get you some, now that you're awake."

"No morphine," he said.

"We can do no morphine," she said easily. "Are you nauseated?"

"A little, but I'm not about to vomit."

The nurse poked the monitors for a moment and then left, returning with a syringe full of something that she pushed into his IV. "That should help," she said.

"Mm," Fenris said noncommittally.

"I'll leave you alone with your family for a bit, but the doctor will be coming back soon." She disappeared again, closing the door gently.

The moment she did, Fenris stretched out the hand that didn't have an IV in it to find Marian's. Garrett casually stopped and stayed in the corner. Or, well, he tried to do it casually, but Marian saw him and almost laughed.

"I have not forgotten what I said," Fenris said, even though every word sounded painful. He was apparently content to pretend Garrett wasn’t there, so Marian had to be, as well.

"Yeah, me either," Marian said, her heart speeding up. "We're going to have to find a better way to relieve stress than needling each other into fights."

"I can think of one." He chuckled. "Responsible adult."

"You bite your tongue," she said, chuckling as well, although the reminder of their night together sent a wash of heat to her face. "I'm still a disaster."

"Garrett's planning our wedding, isn't he."

It wasn't really a question, but both of them looked over at him. "I'm not!" he said, holding his hands up in protest. "But, you know, I think fall's a nice time for a wedding."

Marian found the box of tissues and threw it at him. She turned back to Fenris and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t think to ask before, but the lines--do they hurt all the time?”

“Not--really.”

That meant yes. “I can’t--I’m so sorry, Fen.”

“It is what it is,” he said, and damn him for being so practical two seconds out of surgery.

“I think they’re pretty, you know?” she said in a rush. “The lines. And I wish I didn’t.”

“They were planned to be aesthetically pleasing as well as theoretically functional. If they can’t do the second, they may as well have achieved the first.”

Marian was crying again, damnit, and she wiped away the tears angrily. “You’re awfully sanguine about this.”

“I can’t change what happened to me,” he said. “I can’t change the way other people react to me, if they can see the lines. If you find them aesthetically pleasing--” He shrugged and winced. “I’d rather you find me attractive than not.”

She took a shuddery breath. “I love you, you’re fucking gorgeous, I wish you didn’t hurt all the time from the lines.”

“Right now I’m not feeling much pain at all,” Fenris said, squeezing her hand, and Marian understood the subject was closed. At least for the time being.

***

Fenris was surprisingly content, given that the structural integrity of his midsection had been compromised and he'd be beholden to someone else for simple things such as bathing for several days. That, and apparently someone--possibly Anders--had informed Marian and Garrett of something he’d successfully kept from them for years. And yet he was happy, or nearly so. It was likely the drugs. It certainly couldn't be the mere fact of Marian's presence and the knowledge that, indeed, she felt about him the same way he felt about her.

It did help that Garrett was not far away. His presence always made Fenris feel safer. That feeling of safety even continued when a police officer came in to ask him when would be a good time to take his statement about the assault. Fenris told him to come back tomorrow, and the officer nodded and left.

When Kat the nurse and some doctor had poked and prodded him to their satisfaction and had left him alone again, Marian asked, "Is it okay if everyone else comes up to see you? I think they'll be happy to go home once that's happened."

"That would be fine," Fenris said. They could get their fussing over with and perhaps they would not bother him as much in the next few days.

Garrett texted someone, and a few minutes later the other three--five, actually, because the Hawke parents had joined them--came into the room. "Fenris!" Leandra said. "Oh, my dear boy. You'll be coming home with us?"

"I . . . "

"He's staying with me," Marian said. "Or I'm staying with him. Whichever."

Well, he hadn't actually made a decision yet, but . . .

"He's not getting out of the hospital for another day or so, folks," Garrett said. "He has time to figure this out."

Fenris was grateful to Garrett for saying the right thing, which had been a little jumbled in his head. It was hopefully the drugs.

He let everyone coo at him and pat his hand gently--or in Bela's case, kiss him in a way that made Marian squeeze his hand possessively--and once they'd all done that, they settled down into chairs stolen from other rooms. They chatted at and around him, and he settled into the hum of the voices of the people he . . . loved, he suppose.

The drugs were making him sappy, he was sure of it.

“Zev called back,” Isabela was saying. “He thinks he has something. I’ll . . . I’ll be seeing them tomorrow, I think, anyway, so I can see if it’s helpful. If so, I’ll send him to you, Malcolm.”

“You’ll be seeing them tomorrow?” Marian asked.

“It’s just for lunch,” she said defensively.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, resonant and authoritative. Fenris assumed it was one of the doctors until the owner showed up in the doorway--a woman, around Leandra’s age, with silver-blonde hair confined in a tight bun and a sharp but severe suit that Leandra would never wear. Fenris had never met this woman, but nonetheless he knew who she was: Meredith Stannard, Commander of the Watchmen and head of the Guild.

She was flanked by Cullen Rutherford and Aveline Vallen, both looking uncomfortable in full suits as well. Aveline’s red hair was back in a braid, revealing a strong jawline and an uncompromising set to her mouth. Cullen’s brow was furrowed and he was standing in something not unlike parade rest, his hands clasped behind his back. There had been too many people in the room when it was just the seven guests plus Fenris, but with three more, it felt like the walls were about to burst. It got even worse when she shut the door to the room behind her.

Or perhaps that was just Fenris. He held onto Marian’s hand a little desperately.

“Meredith,” Malcolm said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m given to understand a crime took place,” Commander Stannard said, looking around the room. “A crime under my jurisdiction.”

“I do not wish to press charges,” Fenris said, despite the fact that he'd told the officer to come back the next day. It wasn’t necessarily that he didn’t think that Bartrand didn’t deserve punishment for what he’d done, if he'd even been the one to set the trap, but more that a charge of--what? Assault?--would be inconsequential in the grand scheme of what else SHIELD and, likely, other law enforcement would be investigating.

“That is not entirely your decision, Mr. Wolfe,” Commander Stannard said. “Now, you will tell me what happened.”

“I’m not answering any questions,” Fenris said. He added, “On the advice of my attorney,” half to be cheeky, half because it was true anyway, even if Malcolm had never said anything.

“But, Mr. Wolfe,” Commander Stannard said, sounding perfectly agreeable, “you haven’t been charged with a crime. Why would you need an attorney?”

“Meredith,” Malcolm said, a warning in his tone. Garrett moved to stand between Fenris’s bed and the commander, and Marian shifted her weight ominously.

“Oh, stand down, Malcolm. How can I determine if a crime has been committed if I can’t interview the victim?”

“A regular police officer was already here,” Malcolm said, and he might have said more except there was a commotion of some sort in the hallway.

"What's that?" Isabela asked.

Cullen, standing closest to the door, opened it to stick his head out and said, "There's--shit!" He stumbled backwards as someone burst into the room, pushing Aveline and Commander Stannard out of the way. Aveline's elbow ended up in Merrill's side, resulting in a small _oof_ , but even Merrill was staring at the intruder.

"You!" the intruder said--red hair, impressive mustache. "You've fucked this all up!"

He was pointing to Fenris, but Varric responded, because of course it was his brother, Bartrand. "Bartrand, no!"

“Bartrand!” Meredith snapped at the same time.

Bartrand whirled around to look at Varric and then Meredith, but before he could make another move, a small fist shot out and hit him in the jaw, right where Fenris had punched him before. It didn't knock him out, but it stopped him in his tracks long enough for Garrett to get there and tackle him. Cullen and Aveline weren’t far behind.

A moment later, while Garrett was sitting on his back, Aveline on his feet, and Cullen had produced a set of handcuffs out of nowhere, the Spook--Phil--and his friend Clint, the two from SHIELD who had absconded with Bartrand in the first place, came running in from the hallway. "Oh, good, you've got him," Clint said.

“What are you doing here?” Meredith demanded.

“Apprehending a suspect who escaped our custody,” Phil said. “May I ask what you’re doing here?”

“How did he escape?” Marian asked.

"He had some sort of thing," Clint said. "It lets him, like, cloud people's minds and sneak places."

"An artifact," Phil corrected. "Yes, that one, Commander Stannard.” He took a strange sickly red-orange statue, perhaps, from the commander’s fingers, carefully using his handkerchief rather than touch it himself. “It appears to give him magical abilities that he doesn't have naturally, and he's been using it to stalk people and, most recently, flee our holding cells. But we'll take custody of him again. You can rest assured he won't be escaping this time. Commander, if you’d do me the favor of accompanying me to SHIELD headquarters, we can get this all straightened out."

“There’s nothing to straighten out,” Commander Stannard said. “This is clearly a magical crime, ergo it’s completely under my jurisdiction and you’re welcome to go home, Agent Coulson.”

“And yet,” Phil said lightly, “you’ll find that SHIELD has jurisdiction over this, according to . . .”

He started talking regulations and codes and UN charters and other things that Fenris didn’t really care about; he might have cared had he not been on painkillers. Maybe.

“. . . so, if you’d like to continue this conversation, I’m sure my boss would be available to discuss it with you.”

“That would probably be the most efficient method,” Commander Stannard said. It sounded like both a concession and as if she’d won something, which was an impressive feat. “Cullen, Aveline, help them.”

She technically could not order Cullen around, and probably not Aveline either, if Fenris was remembering correctly. But before anyone needed to say anything, Phil said, “Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Clint?”

Clint produced a different set of handcuffs, something high-tech and probably magnetic. “Got ‘im, boss.” He pulled off Cullen’s handcuffs and handed them back to the man, saying, “Thanks.”

“You’re, ah, welcome.”

At Clint’s request, Aveline and Garrett let Bartrand up, and Clint threw Bartrand--not insensate but apparently paralyzed?--over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Yes, let’s. Commander, if you will?”

The two SHIELD agents made as if to leave the room, but then Phil stopped. He pulled a business card out of an inside pocket and set it on Fenris’s bedside table. “For you, Mr. Wolfe. I’m sorry to hear about your injuries.” He then left without looking behind him. Commander Stannard trailed after them, looking incredibly frustrated, Cullen and Aveline following after her after tendering brief apologies to Fenris. 

“I’ll phone you later!” Malcolm called after Meredith. There was no response.

"How are they going to get out?" Bela asked no one in particular.

"Presumably the same way they got in," Garrett said.

"That explains nothing!"

"I know."

Marian leaned over and grabbed the card, showing it to Fenris before tucking it into her pocket. “I’ll keep it safe for you.”

“Thank you.” ‘Phil’ turned out to be Agent Phillip J. Coulson, and there was both an email address and a phone number on the card. ‘SHIELD’ stood for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Odd.

“What just happened?” Leandra asked, and they took turns explaining what had happened.

"And then I punched him," Merrill said, ending the tale.

"Good punch," Fenris said. He meant it; she'd kept her thumb in the right spot and her timing had been spot on.

She flushed and smiled at him. "Really?"

"I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it."

Marian squeezed his hand again.

A nurse--not Kat, someone new, dark hair in braids--poked her head in the door. "Is everything okay in here? I thought I heard something." She looked confused for just a moment, but then her face cleared.

"We're fine," Marian said. "I think. Fenris?"

"The drugs are still working," he said.

The nurse squeezed in long enough to check all the machines attached to him and then left. "Push the call button if you need us," she said.

"Oh!" Garrett said, once she'd left. "Dad, did Varric show you what he found?"

"He did," Malcolm said. "Receipts and IOUs. I can't believe that Meredith was so sloppy, but assuming it holds up to forensic investigation, at the very least, she'll have to drop the charges against Varric. If we're lucky, we can get ICE off Anders's back, too."

"We can only hope," Varric said. “Say, didn’t she call Bartrand by name earlier?”

“She in fact did and there are several credible witnesses in this room who will testify to it,” Malcolm said, with an amount of glee in his voice that was almost wholly inappropriate.

There was a quick knock, and Officer Valdez opened the door. He looked into the crowded room and apparently decided to stay in the hallway. "Have you seen anything out of the ordinary?" he asked.

"No, everything's been fine," Garrett said. "Why?"

Officer Valdez shook his head. "No reason. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Wolfe." He left, closing the door as he did.

The nurses kicked out everyone who wasn't Garrett and Marian shortly thereafter, and Garrett kissed Fenris on the forehead. "Take care, okay?" he said softly.

"I will," Fenris said.

Garrett hugged his sister, who only reluctantly let go of Fenris's hand, and then left, promising to return the next day. That left Marian and Fenris alone for the first time in quite a while--well, not that long, actually, only a day. The last twenty-four hours had pretty much been a full week, and he said as much.

"You're not wrong," Marian said. She scooted the chairs around to allow her to prop her feet up, and then took his hand again. "You don't have to stay with me. Mother and Dad's place will be a lot more comfortable."

"Yes, but it won't have you in it."

"I'm a terrible nurse."

"I don't care."

"You will later."

"I'm a terrible patient," he said.

They looked at each other for a long moment. "Let's try, then," she said.

"I thought we'd already agreed to?" He wasn't going to let her go, not without a fight.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you too," he said.

"Garrett doesn't get to plan our wedding."

“Nor does Varric get to include this in his stories.”

Marian groaned. "I’ll have to check to see what exactly he promised earlier, but oh, fuck me, no."

"You'll have to wait until I've recovered."

She smiled at him, lopsided and strangely sweet. "I can wait."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so there's distinctly some handwaving about things like "hospital protocol" and "security" and "realistic reactions to drugs" but my beta stamped it with the "somehow, that is correct" stamp about most of it (not all, and let's face it, spring-loaded traps are a weird legal gray area anyway) so I'm going with it.
> 
> Also I'm sorry it's late, but damn, there was a lot of rewriting necessary to get the "somehow, that is correct" stamp at all. I OWE [FEELSLIKEFIRE](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelslikefire/pseuds/feelslikefire) SO MUCH OKAY GO READ [HER CASTLEVANIA OT3 FIC](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970715/chapters/39886380)
> 
> One more chapter!


	14. ~in which there are rather more answers than questions~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders and Garrett get some resolution . . . and then they definitely get some _resolution_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More info [on Tumblr](http://sconesforjustice.tumblr.com/post/182426900123/fic-rare-in-this-society-chapter-14-last).

Garrett fell asleep before Anders got home that night. What with their schedules, he didn't see Anders before he went into work the next day. He took a long lunch and went to visit Fenris, who wouldn't be discharged until the next morning. "I've got this," Marian said. She had been at the hospital when he got there, but she looked as if she had managed to get some sleep the night before.

“You’ll be staying with her?” Garrett asked Fenris.

“No,” Fenris said. “She’ll be staying with me.”

Marian rolled her eyes. “Whatever, same thing.”

“No, it’s not.”

Garrett grinned. However they arranged it, they were clearly content, and he was happy.

In the middle of the afternoon, Malcolm called to say that his pet digital forensics expert was willing to say that the evidence would hold up in court, at least on a superficial level. "There's a question as to how Varric got a hold of the laptop, but given that his name is on the lease, I would presume that he got in legally."

"Sure," Garrett said, even though he was fairly certain that that wasn't true. Of course, Malcolm knew that as well, but he wouldn't ask questions and no one would tell him otherwise.

Two hours later, right before Garrett left to go home, Malcolm called back. "Hot damn, success," he said. "I called Meredith. Well, I called her lawyer, and the charges against Varric are officially dropped. I got a call from the prosecutor half an hour ago."

"That's amazing, Dad!" Garrett said, spinning in his desk chair. "I presume you called Varric first."

"Yes, obviously. But I have a second piece of news. I faxed the signed report over and her attorney, who seems to be about twenty percent less corrupt than she is, took the news that we had evidence that would probably hold up in court rather poorly."

"I'm stuck on the fact that you faxed it to him, Dad."

"The legal world is about twenty or thirty years behind the times. You know that."

"True."

"Anyway, I just got a phone call from him saying that he was working on getting Meredith to drop the immigration stuff with regards to Anders. Whether or not she keeps her job as head of the Watchmen is still under question, but at least Anders should be safe soon."

"That's great news!" Garrett said. He stood and shut the door so the noise of his celebration wouldn’t disturb his coworkers. "Are you going to call him?"

"I did already, but I wanted to tell you myself. Father's prerogative, you know."

"Oh, sure."

"I'll know more when we get some sort of official notification, or more likely, when I call up ICE and bug them into telling me that the investigation has been dropped, but it looks like there's a decent chance you won't have to marry him."

"Oh," Garrett said and abruptly sat down on the corner of his desk. "Oh, I guess you're right."

"I mean, no one's stopping you if you decide you want to get married anyway, but you could do it in a more leisurely fashion."

Garrett almost didn't hear his father's words. "Yeah, I guess so, Dad," he said. "Listen, I've got to get going."

"Say hi to Anders. Maybe you can come by for dinner this weekend anyway, even though it's not the fourth Sunday."

"Yeah, I'll see. Love you, Dad. Thanks." He hung up, still a little light-headed.

He ended up splurging on a cab home, because he was pretty sure he could remember his address but he wasn't sure he'd remember his stop. On the way, though, his head cleared, but . . . but what, he wasn't quite certain.

When he got inside, Barkspawn greeted him, but not with any particular desperation, which probably meant Anders was home and had already fed him and walked him. "Hi, buddy," he said, scritching the dog's ears.

"You're home," Anders said.

"Yeah, I--"

Anders held a hand up. "Before we get into what happened today, I owe you an apology."

"For what?"

"For the tone of my remarks, and presumably the content, too."

"About Fenris?"

"No," Anders said. "About your family's wealth. I--a lot of people have left me."

Garrett nodded. "Your parents, Karl."

"Various others over the years. None of that is important now. But I'm quite good at chasing people off before they do have a chance to leave."

"Ahh," Garrett said.

"And any ammunition at hand, well." Anders spread his hands. "I suppose you've heard?"

It took a moment, but Garrett figured it out. "That Varric's free, and you probably are? Yeah."

Anders looked strangely hesitant, standing in between the kitchen and the living room. "Well, I guess that means we don't need to marry anymore."

"I guess we don't," Garrett said, looking at his hands, the floor, the dog, anywhere but at Anders.

"So I guess I'll get a new place."

"What?" Garrett's head flew up. "Why would you do that?"

"We don't need to live together if we're not getting married, do we?" Anders said. "So I'll leave."

It all sounded reasonable, but . . . "Well, I mean . . . wait. Are you leaving before I can leave you?"

"Garrett . . ."

"Don't leave. Stay." He didn't, he realized with a rush, want Anders to leave at _all_.

"Stay?"

"I mean, I'm enjoying living with someone who's a better conversationalist than Barkspawn." Garrett chuckled but sobered quickly. "I'm not leaving you. I don't want you to leave me." He didn't really understand where this was coming from, but he agreed with every word coming out of his mouth. If that even made any sense.

"Why does that make sense?" Anders asked the ceiling. "Of course you don't want me to leave."

Garrett raised his eyebrows.

"You're from a big family and you want to bring everyone else into your family," Anders said, "including Fenris and Isabela and, well, me."

"Yeah," Garrett said. "Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know," Anders said, a half-smile on his face. "I really can't imagine you or the rest of the Hawkes behaving otherwise."

"So you'll stay?"

"For now, at least," Anders said. "But, Garrett--what are we to each other?"

"Friends?" Garrett said. "Ex-fiances?"

Anders took a step closer, and Garrett stood up out of his crouch, rubbing his quads. Barkspawn made a small whining noise at the lack of attention. 

"Friends," Anders said. "Sure."

"Well, I mean, if you don't _have_ to marry me, I'm sure you don't want to." He was babbling and he needed to stop right now.

"Well, not yet, at least," Anders agreed. "We haven't even gone on a real date."

"I--what?" This seemed like a quick shift.

Anders gave him an exasperated look. "So we're in agreement that I don't have to marry you."

"That's correct."

"And that I could, at this very moment, leave this apartment and get a hotel or go stay with Bela or something. I don't have to be here."

"I--do you want to leave?"

"No, Garrett!" Anders took two steps to put them nose-to-nose, or at least as close to nose-to-nose as they could be, given the difference in their heights. "I don't want to leave. That's what you were hung up on, right? It’s not really a yes if no might mean I get deported?"

"Well, yes." He didn't know where this was going, but that much was true. “Not that--” He cut himself off and let Anders continue.

"I can't fault your reasoning or morals, but the threat is gone, right?"

"I mean, in theory . . ."

"So what do you want? Not Garrett the responsible, moral adult, but Garrett's hindbrain."

"I--It's not fair to say anything here.” He looked down at the ground. “We should probably take a few days to think it over. Maybe I can go stay at Marian’s and you can stay here. She’ll be staying with Fenris when he gets out of the hospital."

"Is that what you want?"

"I don't know," Garrett admitted, looking back at Anders. "It seems like the right thing to do. I know I like you, quite a bit. A date sounds like a good start. That is, if you want to go on a date with me."

"If I--you really have no idea, do you?"

"No idea about what?" Garrett had never felt so confused in his entire life.

"I have been flirting with you this whole time! You're quite literally the most attractive man I've ever met in my entire life, and you're principled and genuinely good, and you love your family and all of your friends, and I have quite desperately wanted to sit on your dick since the day we met!"

Garrett blinked. "You want--"

"You, you big puppy!"

"Oh!" He took a moment to think about his interactions with Anders over the past couple weeks through that particular lens, and--"Ohhh," he groaned. 

He'd known, maybe, that Anders found him attractive, but, well, it wasn't egotistical so much as factual to say he was used to that, a little. But he'd dismissed any evidence that it was anything more than just a mild, superficial attraction as his own wishful thinking, trying to make their relationship into something that it wasn't. But here Anders was, saying that no, absent any legal or financial reasons to be fond of him, he still wanted him. More than that.

"Ohhhhhh," he said again.

"Yes, ohhh," Anders said. "There's no coercion, so do you believe me when I say I want you?"

Garrett nodded quickly.

"And now that we're not engaged anymore, maybe we can go on a date? Or just--" Anders jerked a thumb in the direction of the bedroom.

All the reasons he shouldn't do this, that they should take some time off and consider all their possibilities, flew out of his head. _Fuck that._ It had been a rough few days and he wanted Anders and Anders wanted him.

Garrett put his hands on Anders's shoulders and then slid them up to his face, looking for even an iota of hesitation. There was none; to the contrary, Anders's eyes heated and his tongue darted out to lick his lips. "Sex first, then date," Garrett said. "Yes?"

"Maker, yes," Anders said, and closed the last distance between them.

They'd kissed before, and even with some passion, but Garrett had always kept a little distance because, well, he'd been worried. Now, nothing was holding them back. To be precise, nothing was holding _Anders_ back. His hands started on Garrett's waist and then went up to press flat on his chest. Someone else might have mistaken it for a request to be let go, but Garrett knew better.

His knowledge was confirmed when Anders broke the kiss, panting, to say, "Off. Your shirt needs to be off."

"Yours too," Garrett said. "Bedroom?"

"Unless you'd prefer to fuck me on the couch."

"Not the first time, no."

"Romantic," Anders said, grinning.

"You knew that."

"I did," Anders said. "Even if you agreed to marry me for green-card reasons, you still hoped we'd eventually fall in love, didn't you? Like a movie?"

Garrett shrugged. "It wouldn't hurt," he admitted. "And you're smart, gorgeous, funny--what's not to love?"

"I am also," Anders said, " _very_ good with my hands and my mouth. Let's go." He grabbed the buckle of Garrett's belt and towed him into the master bedroom; Garrett wisely didn't resist. Why would he want to? Anders was, as he'd said, smart, gorgeous, and funny, and he absolutely wanted to sleep with him.

Right now.

Whichever 'he' was which, because both versions were true.

Garrett grinned suddenly.

"What?" Anders asked.

"I'm just happy," he said. "I've got a hot guy who's literally dragging me into bed. What more could I want?"

"Yourself to be naked?" Anders said hopefully.

Garrett stripped off his light cotton sweater and t-shirt in one quick movement. "You could be more naked, too."

Anders hadn't been at work that day so he was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. The shirt came off almost as quickly as Garrett's had, and then Garrett found himself with an armful of half-naked ex-fiance, all warm skin with a dusting of red-gold over his chest. "Mmf," Garrett said into the kiss, and then set about kissing him back in earnest. Desire, finally unleashed, fizzed through every nerve and rushed down his spine, and he welcomed every bit of it.

They were making their way towards the bed, still kissing, when Garrett stopped and said, "Wait, five seconds of rational thought."

"That long?"

"Condoms and lube are in the drawer in that nightstand, on the left," he said. "You want anything else, gloves, whatever, it's probably in the bathroom or the hall closet."

"Nope, that's fine," Anders said. "And, uh, I'm horrifically ticklish and I'll kick, so please don't."

"I won't," Garrett said. "Anything else?"

Anders shook his head.

"Good." Garrett reached down and unfastened Anders's jeans--he wasn't wearing a belt--and slid a hand down the back to pull him in and, not coincidentally, to help the jeans past Anders's hipbones. They fell to the floor and Anders did a side-step to kick them away. He pressed the palm of his hand to the front of Garrett's pants, and Garrett groaned.

"Oh, dear," Anders said a little absently. "Well, we'll just have to get you out of these pants right away." He unbuckled Garrett's belt and slid it out of the belt loops with a little more friction than was strictly necessary. It also probably wasn't necessary for Anders to trace around the whole shape of his dick, rapidly approaching full hardness, as he unbuttoned and unzipped the pants and slid them down, but Garrett wasn't going to complain.

Well, maybe he might, because Anders took his hands off of Garrett to shove his own underwear down and strip off his socks. On the other hand . . . Garrett made his own underwear and socks disappear and was ready to pull Anders full-length against him when they were both done.

"Ngh, fuck," Anders said, and Garrett had to agree: bare skin to bare skin was always a bit of a shock, but the best kind of shock.

He let his hands wander up and down Anders's back, from shoulder blades to where the gentle swell of his ass started, and waited while Anders figured out where he wanted to put his own hands.

"Maker, I want to climb you like a tree," Anders said, "but you aren't _that_ much bigger than I am . . ."

Garrett spread his feet apart a little and braced himself. "If you want to, you can," he said. He figured if he could pick up Barkspawn, he could support Anders's weight.

Anders laughed, a delighted expression of joy, and jumped up, supporting his weight on Garrett's shoulders for a moment before crashing against him. Garrett caught him by his ass, but the leverage was a little off and they tipped over backwards onto the bed.

Garrett was on his back, laughing as well, and Anders was straddling him, his forearms on the mattress on either side of Garrett's head, chuckling as well. "That almost worked," Anders said.

"I think it worked out great," Garrett said. Anders's ass was just above Garrett's dick; Anders's mouth was close enough that he barely had to lift his head to kiss him, their tongues tangling. Even the air between them was starting to heat, sweat forming on Anders's skin under Garrett's hands, helping them slide together.

Anders was the one who broke the kiss this time to sit up and run his own hands down Garrett's chest. "Mmm, you're a furry one, aren't you?"

"It's why Barkspawn has such short hair," Garrett said. "Couldn't take the competition."

Anders let out a surprised peal of laughter. "He isn't going to, ah, interrupt, is he?" He looked towards the door, but Garrett knew that Barkspawn would be either in the dog bed in the living room or on the bed in the spare bedroom, if Anders had left the door open.

"He knows better," Garrett said. "Just because I get to lick your face and, hopefully, everywhere else doesn't mean that he's invited."

"Good dog," Anders said. "Everywhere else?" He raised one eyebrow.

Garrett pulled one of Anders's hands to his mouth and took his time sucking on each finger, delving his tongue into the sensitive webs between and scraping his teeth lightly over the center of Anders's palm. Anders let out a long, shuddery breath, and Garrett said, "Everywhere you want me to put my mouth."

"Well, that's everywhere, then," Anders said, voice gone all breathy. "Unless you want to save rimming for next time."

"Probably should," Garrett said, although his brain was helpfully supplying him with all sorts of images of Anders screaming in ecstasy as Garrett rimmed him. "You know, wouldn't want to blow throw my entire repertoire in one night."

"Oh, we can't have that," Anders said. "Where would you like to lick next?"

Garrett laughed and pulled Anders back down for a kiss; he shifted his body over so he could roll them onto their sides, facing each other, one of his legs between Anders's. "Lots of places," he said, propping himself up enough to mouth along Anders's jaw and down to his neck.

"Oh, yes, that's a good place," Anders said, and his hips hitched against Garrett's as Garrett apparently hit a particularly sensitive spot just below his ear. "That's a good one, too."

"Any bad ones?"

"Can't think of any."

Garrett kissed his way down Anders's throat, bit along his collarbone, and then gently pressed Anders onto his back. Anders went more than willingly; once he realized what Garrett was asking him to do, he rolled over and spread his legs apart, making room for Garrett to be on top for the moment. Garrett moved over him, and then paused, saying a little apologetically, "I just trimmed my beard this morning. I might give you some beard burn."

"Well, good," Anders said rather emphatically. "You think I hadn't been fantasizing about that?"

A rush of happiness and desire went through Garrett, and he grinned, ducking his head to rub his face all over Anders's chest. Anders groaned and reached out to lace his fingers through Garrett's hair, cupping the back of his head and encouraging Garrett to keep up the motion. "This doesn't tickle?"

"No, it feels amazing," Anders said with another groan.

"Well, then." With a different partner, Garrett might have been more careful not to leave burn marks everywhere, but with Anders encouraging it, he licked and kissed and rubbed his face all the way down to the tangle of reddish-brown hair at Anders's crotch. He avoided leaving any marks on Anders's cock and balls, because that would be counterproductive, but he picked up again as he nosed the inside of Anders's thighs.

Anders smelled like Garrett's body wash and tasted mostly of clean skin with a little sweat; Garrett thought for a moment about re-opening the rimming discussion but, a little reluctantly, put that aside for later. He came back up and licked Anders's dick from balls to tip, and Anders shuddered.

Garrett loved that, loved that Anders was so responsive. He sucked at the head, hand around the base, and Anders just about bucked off the bed. As much as he liked sex--and he liked it quite a bit--about half of his pleasure was derived from seeing his partners' reactions. Pushing Anders’s hips back down to the bed, he set about taking every inch of Anders’s cock as deep as he could, swallowing around the end. It was a little messy; he hadn’t sucked dick in a while, but Anders was gasping and calling out his name and grabbing for the covers, the pillow, Garrett’s hair. 

If he hadn't been hard since about when their pants came off, he would definitely have been hard by the time that Anders took a deep breath and yanked Garrett's head up off of his dick.

"You have to stop or I'm going to blow," Anders said, panting. "It's been a while--undoubtedly longer for me than you--and I'd rather wait."

"Wait for what?" Garrett asked. He didn't touch the length of time since he'd last been laid. A few months was both nothing to sneeze at and nothing to care about. "I'm not in a hurry. You can come now, and then we can wait until you can come again."

"Yes, but I am," Anders said, his fingers digging into Garrett's shoulders. "In a hurry. To get you inside me."

Garrett grinned, because everything about this situation was great. He had Anders, naked, in his bed, telling him how desperate he was to get Garrett's cock inside of him.

"Don't laugh at me, you great ox!"

"I'm not laughing at you," Garrett said. "I'm just happy."

"Yes, well," Anders said, somewhat mollified. "Lube. Fingers. Unless you'd prefer I did it?"

"No, I'd like to," Garrett said, and he rolled over to get into the nightstand. He rolled back with a bottle of lube and a couple condoms, putting the latter on the pillow and clicking the former open.

Anders watched Garrett slick his fingers, but his head fell back on the pillow and he bit his lower lip as Garrett slid the first finger in. "Ahhhhhh, fuck, that's good," he groaned.

"Feels good on my end, too," Garrett said. It was getting harder and harder to keep his head clear; Anders was so perfectly sensitive and watching his face as he got fingered was making sweat break out on Garrett's temples. He turned his hand, dragged the tip of his finger over Anders's prostate, and waited for Anders to stop swearing before he added a second finger.

"More, damn you, Garrett," Anders gasped, his hands fumbling around until he caught the edge of a pillow. He seemed to want something to hold onto, not something to go under his head, because he just left his hands and the pillow there.

"You ready?" Garrett asked.

"Maker, I can't--yes, I'm ready!"

Garrett pulled his first finger out and added more lube; he returned with two, and Anders groaned again, pushing back against him.

"Augh, fuck, you're big all over."

"Well. Yes," Garrett said, looking down at his dick, although he was perfectly aware that Anders was talking about his fingers.

Anders picked up the pillow and batted Garrett over the head with it. "You know what I meant. Although--ohhhhh--that too."

"I'm glad you approve," Garrett said, grinning again. Anders was so much _fun_ in bed. He liked sass, he liked humor, and he just plain liked Anders. Probably soon enough he'd love Anders, but no point in scaring him with that just yet. He leaned down to kiss Anders, although Anders couldn't really concentrate on kissing enough for it to be anything other than an uncoordinated mashing of lips.

"One more," Garrett said. 

It wasn't a question, but Anders nodded anyway. "Yes. One more. Only one more, and then your cock."

"Impatient, are we?"

"I have been waiting nearly two weeks," Anders said in what was nearly a growl. "And here you are being _playful_ and _disarming_ in bed. Will you please just fuck me into the mattress now and then we can be disgustingly cute afterward, or for round two?"

Garrett sat back on his heels, two fingers still inside Anders. He knew full well that Anders's complaints were both his side of the teasing and a request to move a little faster, but he had to play his role as well. Uncapping the lube, he made a show of concentrating on re-slicking the two fingers and adding slick to a third. "Well," he said, "I think I might be able to move a little faster." 

"Thank the--ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Anders's oath was interrupted when Garrett pressed back into his ass with three fingers. "Oh, fuck, yes, that, oh, Garrett."

"Yeah?" Garrett said.

"Yes, exactly that."

"This is what you wanted?"

Anders opened one eye, just a slit of amber-brown. "Getting closer," he said.

"Mmm," Garrett said. He leaned down and captured Anders's lips again, his tongue mimicking his fingers. "That better?" he said, his mouth a breath away from Anders's.

"Yes and no," Anders said.

"You ready?"

"I've been ready for nearly _two weeks_ ," Anders said, "but yes, oh, do please get on with it."

"It?"

"Me."

Garrett chuckled, withdrew his fingers, and set about dealing with the condom and more lube. When he finally settled between Anders's legs, one hand guiding his cock and the other by Anders's hip, Anders curled his head and chest up to watch. "I didn't get my hands on that gorgeous cock of yours," Anders said. "Not much, anyway."

"I could always--stop and let you--touch," Garrett said, the effort of not thrusting forward causing his breath to falter.

"No, no, a thousand times no," Anders said, sitting up enough to get his hands on Garrett's shoulders. "Mattress, me, fucked through, by you. Now!"

"Well, if you insist," Garrett said, grinning. He leaned over, pressed the head of his cock inside, and waited for Anders's body to adjust.

Anders pushed out a few short breaths through his nose. "Okay, yes, maybe you weren't wrong about all the prep," he said, his voice breathy again.

"Still good?"

"Going to be better once you've gotten yourself the rest of the way in."

"Mm, I can do that," Garrett said. He got both of his hands in place, up by Anders's sides, and concentrated on sinking smoothly into him without coming his brains out. Not yet, at least.

He did stop to add more lube once--you could never have too much lube--but by the time he finally bottomed out, his hips against Anders's ass, they were both groaning and quivering with holding back.

"Fuck, Garrett, just--"

"Yeah--" Garrett dropped his head to mouth at where Anders's shoulder joined his neck. "Anders, fuck."

"Yes, yes, yes, that, now move," Anders said on a gasp.

"Yeah," Garrett breathed. He pulled out slowly and eased back in; the motion got easier as Anders relaxed and as the lube got spread properly. Garrett knew all that, intellectually, but his heart was screaming that it got easier because that was where he was supposed to be. "Anders--"

"Yes, yes--more!"

They found a rhythm, found it together, Anders rising to meet Garrett, his legs eventually wrapping around Garrett. Every point where their skin met--legs around waist, Garrett's forearms against Anders's sides, his mouth on Anders's shoulder, Anders's hands on Garrett's shoulders and back, and, of course, his cock in Anders's ass--felt like it wired them together, transmitting electricity back and forth. Desire, lust, and sheer _want_ rose and crested in Garrett, and he lost just enough control to sink his teeth into Anders's shoulder.

"Oh, fuck, _yes_ , Garrett--I--" Anders's thrusts up against him became uneven, and Garrett only barely had time to think, _I should--_ before one of Anders's hands slid between them.

A few strokes from his own hand and Anders was coming, crying out Garrett's name, which was more than a little gratifying. Garrett had enough presence of mind to look up and catch Anders's face as he hit orgasm, and that--and the feel of Anders clenching around him, and, well, everything else--was enough to send him over. "Oh, Anders!"

He carefully avoided collapsing onto Anders, well aware that he outweighed the other man by quite a bit, but he couldn't hold up his own weight forever and he ended up pulling out a little precipitously. "Oof," Anders said as Garrett stripped off the condom and thought really hard about getting up and tossing it out.

"Here," Anders said, standing and wincing a little. "I'll take care of it." He held out his hand and then disappeared into the bathroom, returning after a couple of minutes.

"You're staying, right?" Garrett asked.

"And deny you your proper cuddle and sappy moment? I'd never be so cruel," Anders said lightly.

Garrett grinned anyway. "C'mere."

Anders got into bed and rolled towards the center. Garrett met him halfway and pulled him in for a long, slow kiss before rolling onto his back and pulling Anders in to settle on his shoulder. "Can I say how glad I am that we're not engaged anymore?"

"I'm sure I'm at least as glad as you are." Anders ran a hand from Garrett's hip to his shoulder and back again. "You were magnificent. You _are_ magnificent."

"Thank you. You are, too." Garrett entwined his fingers with Anders's and let out a happy sigh.

They were quiet for a few moments, and Garrett was starting to wonder if Anders was going to fall asleep when Anders said, "You're planning our wedding, aren't you?"

Garrett was not--he really hadn't been thinking of anything at all--but he knew what the proper response was. "No, of course I wasn't."

"No?"

"Well, you know, good wedding ideas could be reused for more than one wedding . . ."

"Oh?"

"I was planning Marian and Fenris's wedding, of course."

Anders snorted and rolled over on top of him, settling his forearms on Garrett's chest and pillowing his head on them. "You promised me a date."

"I did," Garrett said.

"I think I'd like more than one."

"I can offer a good package. Unlimited dates."

"You do offer a good package," Anders said, grinning; the shimmy of his hips left no doubt what package he meant.

"We've done this rather backwards, haven't we?" Garrett said. "Got engaged, moved in together, broke it off, had sex, and have now decided to date."

"Well, it seems to be turning out okay," Anders said.

"It does." He pulled Anders in for another long kiss, trying to put all of his feelings into it, which was rather a lot for one kiss. So it turned into two. And then four.

And then . . . well, if Anders was going to pin him down and ride him, he wasn't going to say no.

\--the end--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS THE END. OH MY GOD. Thank you all for reading it while I was just posting a chapter at a time! This is the first time I've done that (on my own) and in a new fandom, so thanks for making it fun!
> 
> Thanks SO much to feelslikefire, as always, and to adorable_eggplant for listening to me complain, and to the entire SH Slack for . . . also listening to me complain. Thanks especially to my spouse, who will never read this, for putting off watching an episode of Letterkenny so I can finish editing and posting. And thank you to my dog for sitting on my feet as it's currently -25 degrees F where I'm at.
> 
> Am I gonna write more in this 'verse? Maybe. I think I owe Bela some resolution. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks five million zillion billion times over to my endlessly amazing beta and bff [feelslikefire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelslikefire/pseuds/feelslikefire), who tamed the semicolons and encouraged me to, you know, write fanfiction again after about three years off. Thanks, as always, to [adorable_eggplant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adorable_eggplant/pseuds/adorable_eggplant) for putting up with my bullshit. Thanks also to the group who issued the challenge, and to the SH Slack for their endless cheerleading and support. Special thanks to Matt Hope for a last-minute quick read of the opening to see if it was fixed properly.
> 
> Also, the title is from "Englishman in New York" by Sting for reasons that I hope are obvious by the time you got to this note.


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